[Python-Dev] disable writing .py[co] (original) (raw)

Guido van Rossum guido@python.org
Tue, 21 Jan 2003 09:48:57 -0500

Skip Montanaro <skip@pobox.com> writes:

> Here's a slightly different alternative. (It woke me up this morning, so I > know it's a good idea. ;-) > > Instead of an environment variable which functions simply as an on/off > switch, add an environment variable named PYCROOT which can be used to > control writing of .pyc files as follows: > > * if not present, status quo > > * if present and refers to an existing directory, prepend PYCROOT to any > attempts to read or write .pyc files. The idea of writing .pycs to a world writable area (say /tmp) on a multi-user system sounds like a Bad Thing.

Years ago, Bill Janssen at Xerox had a use case for this: they apparently have a setup where the normal way of accessing files is a shared replicated read-only virtual filesystem, but you can prefix something to a path that accesses a writable server (if you have permissions of course).

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)