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[Python-Dev] Mysterious Python pyc file corruption problems

Barry Warsaw barry at python.org
Fri May 17 18:42:25 CEST 2013 
On May 16, 2013, at 04:52 PM, Terry Jan Reedy wrote:

>If the corruption only happens on Ubuntu, that would constitute 'rhyme'
>;-). I realize that asking for reports on other systems is part of the reason
>you posted, but I don't remember seeing any others yet.

Right. :)  It's harder to dig out similar problems in Debian[1] but it's
pretty clear that there have been *some* similar reports in Debian.  Ubuntu
and Debian share almost all their Python infrastructure.  It would definitely
be interesting to whether Fedora/RedHat or any other Linux distros have seen
similar problems.

I don't know how Fedora/RH does package installation.  In Debian/Ubuntu, we do
not ship pyc files, but instead they are generated in "post-installation"
scripts, which boil down to calls to `$PYTHON -m py_compile - < filenames`.

>Do failures only occur during compileall process? (or whatever substitute you
>use).

No, they are all post-installation failures in unrelated packages that try to
import pure-Python modules.  AFAICT, the post-installation byte-compilation
scripts are not erroring.

Doing a post-compilation verification step might be interesting, but I bet
backporting atomic renames to py_compile.py will fix the problem, or at least
band-aid over it. ;)

-Barry
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