pip compiles pyc files for installed scripts

[SpecLad]

Description

When pip installs a wheel with custom scripts that have a .py extension, it creates corresponding .pyc files. This pollutes the bin directory, and doesn't accomplish anything, since I don't think Python loads .pyc files for scripts.

Expected behavior

Now granted, the wheel spec does say:

Compile any installed .py to .pyc. (Uninstallers should be smart enough to remove .pyc even if it is not mentioned in RECORD.)

(emphasis mine)

But I think common sense suggests that only .py files in the purelib and platlib directories should be compiled.

pip version

22.2.2

Python version

3.10.4

OS

Ubuntu 22.04

How to Reproduce

Install docutils, then look in the bin directory.

Output

$ python3 -mvenv ./venv
$ ./venv/bin/pip install -U pip
[...]
$ ./venv/bin/pip install docutils
Collecting docutils
  Downloading docutils-0.19-py3-none-any.whl (570 kB)
     ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 570.5/570.5 kB 2.2 MB/s eta 0:00:00
Installing collected packages: docutils
Successfully installed docutils-0.19
$ ls ./venv/bin/__pycache__/
rst2html.cpython-310.pyc   rst2latex.cpython-310.pyc  rst2odt_prepstyles.cpython-310.pyc  rst2xetex.cpython-310.pyc
rst2html4.cpython-310.pyc  rst2man.cpython-310.pyc    rst2pseudoxml.cpython-310.pyc       rst2xml.cpython-310.pyc
rst2html5.cpython-310.pyc  rst2odt.cpython-310.pyc    rst2s5.cpython-310.pyc              rstpep2html.cpython-310.pyc

Code of Conduct

• [X] I agree to follow the PSF Code of Conduct.

[pfmoore]

IMO, this isn't worth worrying about. It should be rare (these days, entry points are recommended over scripts anyway) and it doesn't cause any real problem, just clutter.

Having said that, if someone were to create a PR, it could be considered.

[SpecLad]

FWIW, installer seems to already implement this: https://github.com/pypa/installer/blob/70ae05bb25c66e621064f2c031a04ac1192be30b/src/installer/destinations.py#L243