[Python-Dev] PEP 3147, __pycache__ directories and umask

[Isaac Morland]

On Tue, 23 Mar 2010, Antoine Pitrou wrote:

> Greg Ewing <greg.ewing <at> canterbury.ac.nz> writes:
>>> The main point of the __pycache__ proposal is to solve the needs of
>>> Ubuntu/Debian packagers. If you are developing (rather than deploying or
>>> building packages), you shouldn't have these needs AFAICT.
>>
>> Maybe it's one point, but I'm not sure it's the *main* one.
>
> It's the only reason the PEP was originally designed, and proposed.

At least one additional use case has appeared.  Actually, my use case was 
mentioned long ago, but I didn't really push (e.g. by writing a patch) and 
nobody jumped on it.  But this PEP solves my case too, so it should not be 
ignored just because the immediate impetus for the PEP is another case.

>> Personally I would benefit most from it during development.
>
> Why? What benefit would it bring to you?

I'm sure Greg will jump in if I'm wrong about what he is saying, but the 
benefit to me and to Greg and to others writing .py code is that our 
directories will contain *.py and __pycache__, rather than *.py and *.pyc. 
So it will be much easier to see what is actually there.

Or if we're using SVN and we do "svn status", the only spurious result 
will be "? __pycache__" rather than "? X.pyc" for every X.py in the 
directory.

Or whatever other good effects come from having less junk in our source 
directories.

Directory tidiness is a positive general feature with at least a few 
specific benefits.

Isaac Morland			CSCF Web Guru
DC 2554C, x36650		WWW Software Specialist