quick n' dirty measurement of compression and byte-compilation

[Michael Hudson]

Zooko <zooko at zooko.com> writes:

> [Please Cc: zooko at zooko.com in replies.  Thank you!]

Oh, do I have to?

> Dear Pythonismos and Pythonoreans:
> 
> I noticed that the PyXML build script byte-compiles its .py files.
> It seems like this potentially introduces incompatibility if the
> version of Python used to build differs from the version used to run
> the resulting package.

Depends where you install the files.  By default don't they end up in

    $(prefix)/lib/python$(VERSION)/site-packages
                          ^^^^^^^
?  Anyway, if you try to import the files into the "wrong" version of
Python, they'll be recompiled (if you can write to that directory).

> Python seems to have broken forward- and backward-compatibility for
> bytecode in almost every release from 1.5 to 2.2.

Yep.  Not sure about 1.6->2.0.  Except saying "broken" implies there
was ever a hint of compatibility...

Cheers,
M.