[Python-ideas] Changes to the existing optimization levels

[Diana Clarke]

Oh, I like this idea!

I had very briefly considered treating the existing flag as a
bitfield, but then promptly forgot to explore that line of thought
further.

I'll play with that approach next week, see where it takes me, and
then report back.

Thanks so much for taking the time to think this through with me –
much appreciated.

Cheers,

--diana

On Fri, Sep 29, 2017 at 1:33 AM, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2. We could reinterpret "optimize" as a bitfield instead of a regular
> integer, special casing the already defined values:
>
> - all zero: no optimizations
> - sign bit set: negative -> use global settings
> - 0x0001: nodebug+noassert
> - 0x0002: nodebug+noassert+nodocstrings
> - 0x0004: nodebug
> - 0x0008: noassert
> - 0x0010: nodocstrings
>
> The "redefine optimizations as a bitfield" approach seems particularly
> promising to me - it's a full integer, so even with all negative
> numbers disallowed and the two low order bits reserved for the legacy
> combinations, that's still 29 different optimisation flags given
> 32-bit integers. We currently have 3, so that's room for an 866%
> increase in the number of defined flags :)