[sugar] Removing docstrings

C. Scott Ananian cscott
Mon Aug 25 19:08:07 EDT 2008


A previous message (can't find it now to respond to it, sorry)
indicated that static docstrings were responsible for a significant
amount of sugar's runtime memory requirements.

The python interpreter's "-O -O" option specifically addresses this;
it removes docstrings from the running image.  This command-line
option is probably appropriate for use for the sugar shell to allow us
to preserve doc strings for interactive use and offline documentation,
while removing the memory penalty and any disincentive for developers
to properly document their APIs.

Is anyone interested in changing the first line of
/usr/bin/sugar-shell to '#!/usr/bin/python2.5 -O -O' and measuring the
execution time / memory size savings attained?  Bonus points if you
can quantify the NAND space / speed tradeoff involved in using .pyo
files, which are enabled by the first -O option, since by default we
are deleting .pyo files to save space.  Are the memory/speed
improvements obtained with '-O -O' worth the cost?
 --scott

-- 
 ( http://cscott.net/ )



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