How can I disable generation of pyc and pyo files?

Question

Autotools insists on generating pyo and pyc files when building my project (not when running it) no matter what I do. The problem is that my Python configuration is somewhat strange, and I don't want the Python compiler to run during installation. Is there any way to disable generating these files?

For reference, here are the things I've tried:

• Setting py_compile=echo so that automake won't compile Python scripts
• Manually defining install-pythonPYTHON in Makefile.am
• Setting PYTHONFLAGS=-B
• Setting PYTHONDONTWRITEBYTECODE in Makefile.am, configure.ac, etc.
• Creating a new automake variable "python2dir" and installing the script using dist_python2_DATA = Script.py

Basically, if a file ends with the .py extension, Automake WILL create pyc and pyo files, no matter what you do.

Answer 1

Please try again with your last attempt.

dist_python_DATA = foo.py

will treat foo.py as any regular file, distribute it, and install it in $(pythondir). _DATA does not trigger any kind of compilation.

Answer 2

See the -B option in the documentation.