[Python-ideas] size of the installation of Python on mobile devices

[Xavier de Gaye]

On 07/28/2016 08:07 PM, M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
 > Sourceless distributions are not discouraged. They are essential
 > for commercial use cases and I would strongly oppose removing
 > the possibility to ship byte code only applications.
 >
 > Why do you think that this doesn't work anymore ?

This refers to this message [1] from the discussion in issue 26852.
I would not think that sourceless distributions are discouraged if I
am submitting a patch that adds an option to build a sourceless
distribution, there are better ways to waste time :)

The drawbacks of sourceless distributions:
* Quote from PEP 3147 "In practice, it is well known that pyc files
   are not compatible across Python major releases. A reading of
   import.c [3] in the Python source code proves that within recent
   memory, every new CPython major release has bumped the pyc magic
   number.".
* The test suite cannot be run on a sourceless distribution as many
   tests use the linecache module.

It would be useful to know the other reasons why a sourceless
distribution is discouraged, so we might fix them. And if they cannot be
fixed then issue 26852 can be closed.

[1] http://bugs.python.org/issue26852#msg271535