[Python-Dev] More optimisation ideas

[Nick Coghlan]

On 2 February 2016 at 02:40, R. David Murray <rdmurray at bitdance.com> wrote:
> On the other hand, if the distros go the way Nick has (I think) been
> advocating, and have a separate 'system python for system scripts' that
> is independent of the one installed for user use, having the system-only
> python be frozen and sourceless would actually make sense on a couple of
> levels.

While omitting Python source files does let us reduce base image sizes
(quite significantly), the current perspective in Fedora and Project
Atomic is that going bytecode-only (whether frozen or not) breaks too
many things to be worthwhile. As one simple example, it means
tracebacks no longer include source code lines, dramatically
increasing the difficulty of debugging failures.

As such, we're more likely to pursue minimisation efforts by splitting
the standard library up into "stuff essential distro components use"
and "the rest of the standard library that upstream defines" than by
figuring out how to avoid shipping source files (I believe Debian
already makes this distinction with the python-minimal vs python
split).

Zipping up the standard library doesn't break tracebacks though, so
it's potentially worth exploring that option further.

Cheers,
Nick.

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