[Python-Dev] compileall.py and make install

[Jeremy Hylton]

A brief historical analysis of the situation

In the olden days, py_compile.py did not catch SyntaxErrors.  If
compileall.py used py_compile.py to compile a file and it failed,
it would print an error message but continue working. 

When Python 1.5.2 was released, py_compile was updated to catch the
exceptions on its own.

About six months later, well before 2.0, a change was made to
compileall to exit with non-zero status if it caught a syntax error.
This change apparently had no effect, because compileall never saw
syntax errors.

Jeremy