Python: Programmatically compiling a Python package into pyc or pyo files

Question

This is for my test suite.

I have an automatically-generated Python package in a temporary folder. It's all .py files. I want to programmatically compile these into (a) .pyc and (b) .pyo files. (One test will do .pyc, another will do .pyo.) This should be done with the active interpreter, of course. I do not want to import the modules, just compile.

How can I do this?

Answer 1

In your Python lib directory, there will be a script called compileall.py (e.g., /usr/lib/python2.6/compileall.py).

In your code, spawn (e.g., by using os.spawnl) an invocation of compileall.py pointed at the directory containing your generated code. If you invoke it using python -O it will generate .pyo files; if you invoke it using python it will generate .pyc file.

The trick, I suppose, would be to call with the right version of the Python interpreter.

compileall.py uses py_compile under the hood.

Answer 2

You may want to have a look at the py_compile module. Sadly it won't let you choose between pyo and pyc.