[Python-Dev] __file__

[Doug Hellmann]

On Feb 26, 2010, at 8:30 PM, Brett Cannon wrote:

> So what is the burden of including a single source file that added  
> the support to load from bytecode-only modules? I am not saying you  
> shouldn't be able to have this functionality, just that I personally  
> don't want to pay for the overhead (both performance-wise and  
> development-wise) by default just because you and some other people  
> want this functionality for some clients.

If such a module was available, we'd use it if that was the way to  
achieve what we want. We could write something like that on our own,  
but we'd be more likely to decide to just stick with Python 2 for  
longer because we're going to prioritize new features over doing  
"hidden" maintenance work like that.

So, we want the ability to ship bytecode-only versions of the  
software, but the specific mechanism for doing so doesn't matter a lot.

Doug