Hi, As you know the Python packages are collecting the pyc/pyo precompiled binaries inside the RPM. This is mostly a good idea, as makes the first execution of the Python code faster, as is skipped the stage where the interpreter compile the .py code. But this also makes the Python stack a bit fat. Most of the time this is not a problem, but things are changing. We have JeOS and MicroOS, both minimal images (build with different goals and technology) that search for be small and slim. But we want to include a bit of Python in there, like salt-minion or cloud-init. And now the relative size of Python is evident. For Python 2.7 and 3.7 is possible to remove the pyc code from the system and instruct the interpreter to avoid the recreation of the pyc once the code is executed. The Python interpreter, by default, will compile and store the pyc in the disk for each `import`, but this behavior can be disable when we call Python. But this will make the initial execution of a big Python stack a bit slow, as the pyc needs to be recreated in memory for each invocation. The slowness can be relevant in some situations, so is better to not enable this feature. But in Python 3.8 there is a new feature in place, bpo-33499, that will recognize a new env variable (PYTHONPYCACHEPREFIX) that will change the place where __pycache__ is stored [2]. I backported this feature to 3.7 and create a JeOS image that includes salt-minion. I created an small shim that replace the python3.7 binary to enable this cache prefix feature, to point it to /var/ cache/pycache/<username>, and I removed from the image all the python compiled code. I decided salt-minion as saltsack is a relevant Python codebase. I needed to port to 3.7 150 python libraries to create the first PoC. The PoC works properly locally. I have yet some bits that I need to publish in the repo, but the general idea seems to work OK. I can also publish the gain on size for the ISO with the patch and without the patch, to have more data to compare. I also estimated some gains for different scenarios. For example in a normal TW installation: * Python 2.7 + 3.6 - pyc/pyc: 127M total - py: 109M total * Python 3.6 only - pyc/pyc: 91M total - py: 70M total Python pyc/pyo size is more than the py code size, so we can potentially half the size of the Python 3 stack. Maybe for a normal TW installation the absolute gain is not much (91M). But for other scenarios can be relevant, like in OpenStack Cloud, where the size of the Python code is big. I made some calculations based on all the different OpenStack services: * Python 2.7 OpenStack services - pyc/pyo: 1.2G total - py: 804M total Saving 1.2G each node is a more important number. So, my proposal is to remove the pyc from the Python 3 packages and enable the cache layer on Tumbleweed since Python 3.7. I do not know if do that by default or under certain configurations, as I am not sure how to that feature optional. Any ideas? Any suggestions? What do you think if I follow this path? Some ideas that I have are add a new %pycache-clean macro that will remove the __pycache__ from the RPM, add a new rpmlint check to make sure that there are not pyc for a python3 package, update the wiki and update the py2pack code to generate good python3 spec files for openSUSE. But if most of the community do not agree with this approach, I can drop the idea : ) [1] https://bugs.python.org/issue33499 [2] https://docs.python.org/3.8/whatsnew/3.8.html p.s: Sorry if the message is delivered two times, one from the .com account. My bad. -- SUSE Linux GmbH, GF: Felix Imendörffer, Jane Smithard, Dilip Upmanyu, Graham Norton, HRB 21284 (AG Nürnberg) Maxfeldstraße 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-packaging+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-packaging+owner@opensuse.org