[Python-ideas] Changing optimisation level from a script

[Damien George]

> What is to stop you from adding this to micropython as a library
> extension?

That's what I would like to do, and usually we do just go ahead and
add our own extensions, trying to be Pythonic as possible :)

But we do that a lot and sometimes I think it would be good to discuss
with upstream (ie python-dev/python-ideas) about adding new
functions/classes so that MicroPython doesn't diverge too much (eg
Paul Sokolovsky had a discussion about time.sleep_ms, time.sleep_us
etc, which was fruitful).  sys.optimize(value) is a pretty simple
addition so I thought it would be a straight forward discussion to
have here.

I guess my main question to this list is: if CPython were to add a
function to change the optimisation level at runtime, what would it
look like?  I don't want to push CPython to actually add such a thing
if it's not seen as a useful addition.  Instead I want to see how
others would implement it if they needed to.

A nice outcome would be that MicroPython adds the function now (eg
sys.optimize), and in the future if CPython finds that it needs it, it
also adds the same function with the same name/module/signature.
Hence why I would like to add it correctly into MicroPython from the
very beginning.

Alternatively we can just use the micropython module and add
micropython.optimize(value), and then if CPython does add it later on
we'll have to change how we do it.

> I've never felt the urge to do this and I don't think I've
> ever heard it requested before. If you think it should be in the
> stdlib, given the timing of the 3.6 feature freeze the earliest time
> it could land would be Python 3.7.

No, I definitely don't want to make a rush for 3.6.  I guess the
timing of this post was not the best considering the 3.6 release :)

> Finally, let's not define APIs with
> British spelling. :-)

Haha, the spelling never even crossed my mind!  Well, sys.opt() is
definitely too short and confusing, so "optimize" would be the choice.

Cheers,
Damien.