[Python-Dev] PEP 3147, pycache directories and umask (original) (raw)

Antoine Pitrou solipsis at pitrou.net
Mon Mar 22 21:33:14 CET 2010

Barry Warsaw <barry python.org> writes:

When Python is being installed, either by a from-source 'make install' or by the distro packager, then you'd expect the umask not to be insane. In the latter case, it's a bug and in the former case you screwed up so you should be able to delete and reinstall, or at the very least execute the same find command that Python's own Makefile calls (in my branch) for 'make clean'. When you're installing packages, again, I would expect that the system installer, or you via easyinstall or whatever, would not have an insane umask.

Well, precisely. That's why I suggest that creating the pycache directories be done at install time (or packaging time), and not via the core import machinery (that is, not at import time). That is, when you know you are the right user, with the right umask.

Which also means that it can and probably should be pulled out of the core (and written in pure Python, which is also much more practical to maintain, test and debug).

I don't particularly like this much, because most people won't get the benefit of it in a local dev environment.

AFAICT it has no benefit in a local dev environment (apart from supposedly "cleaner" directories, which is not something anyone seems to consider a problem with the current CPythons).

And again, this could be part of the distutils standard "setup.py install" (or "setup.py develop" with distutils2/distribute) if people care :)

Regards

Antoine.

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