On Sat, Feb 23, 2002 at 02:19:49PM +0000, Lazarus Long wrote: > What is the point of pre-compiling C code before packaging it into > .debs? If you can answer that, apply that answer to Python code.
First off, in python the source IS the program. Like perl, it byte-compiles as an optimization at runtime. But unlike perl, it has the ability to cache the byte-compiled version to the disk to speed up future runs. So on one side you have plain source, without caching, which is slow to startup. On the other side you could do it like C, except that requires downloading new versions every time you upgrade python, and would probably only allow one version of python to be installed at once. And in the middle you have the current method, which only suffers from the minor issues of the .py[co] files not being known to dpkg, and taking slightly longer to install. Compared to the alternatives, I think it beats them hands down. -- Adam Olsen, aka Rhamphoryncus