[Python-Dev] python process creation overhead

[Nick Coghlan]

On 13 May 2014 10:19,  <dw+python-dev at hmmz.org> wrote:
> On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 04:22:52PM -0700, Gregory Szorc wrote:
>
>> Why can't Python start as quickly as Perl or Ruby?
>
> On my heavily abused Core 2 Macbook with 9 .pth files, 2.7 drops from
> 81ms startup to 20ms by specifying -S, which disables site.py.
>
> Oblitering the .pth files immediately knocks 10ms off regular startup. I
> guess the question isn't why Python is slower than perl, but what
> aspects of site.py could be cached, reimplemented, or stripped out
> entirely.  I'd personally love to see .pth support removed.

The startup code is currently underspecified and underdocumented, and
quite fragile as a result. It represents 20+ years of organic growth
without any systematic refactoring to simplify and streamline things.

That's what PEP 432 aims to address, and is something I now expect to
have time to get back to for Python 3.5. And yes, one thing those
changes should enable is the creation of system Python runtimes on
Linux that initialise faster than the current implementation.

Cheers,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia