[Python-Dev] C extension import time

[Stefan Krah]

Hi,

recently there has been some talk about reducing import times. It seems
that the current import strategy for C extensions (i.e. importing the
extension at the bottom of the .py file) is quite slow:


====================

import sys

for i in range(10000):
    import decimal
    del sys.modules('decimal')
    del sys.modules('_decimal')

====================


With the regular decimal.py the script is about 9 times slower than running
it with a modified decimal.py that just contains "from _decimal import *".


I don't know enough about the import mechanism to say whether this is
a particularly good benchmark. If it is, perhaps we should devise another
strategy for loading C extensions.


Stefan Krah