[Python-Dev] deprecating .pyo and -O (original) (raw)

Steven D'Aprano steve at pearwood.info
Thu Jun 14 22:38:45 CEST 2012

Floris Bruynooghe wrote:

On 14 June 2012 11:25, Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net> wrote:

Honestly, I think the best option would be to deprecate .pyo files as well as the useless -O option. They only cause confusion without providing any significant benefits. +1 But what happens to debug and assert statements? I think it should be possible to always put assert statements inside a debug block and then create -O a simple switch for setting debug to False. If desired a simple strip tool could then easily remove debug blocks and (unused) docstrings.

So in other words, you want to keep the functionality of -O, but make it the responsibility of the programmer to write an external tool to implement it?

Apart from the duplication of effort (everyone who wants to optimize their code has to write their own source-code strip tool), that surely is only going to decrease the reliability and usefulness of Python optimization, not increase it.

-O may be under-utilized by programmers who don't need or want it, but that doesn't mean it isn't useful to those who do want it. -1 on deprecation.

-- Steven

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