How we made Python's packaging library 3x faster

4 months ago

Performance improvements in Python's packaging library, including up to 2x faster Version reading and 3x faster SpecifierSet operations.
Use of Python 3.15's statistical profiler and PyPI metadata to identify and optimize core packaging constructs.
Significant speedups achieved through regex optimizations, removing NamedTuple, and reducing duplicate Version creation.
Introduction of micro-benchmarks with asv to measure performance improvements accurately.
Collaboration with Damian Shaw and Kevin Turcios to enhance packaging performance, benefiting tools like pip.
Optimizations include faster regex, lazy computation, caching, and using slots for better memory usage.
Final performance numbers show reading versions is nearly 2x faster, and checking Python version compatibility is 3x faster.
Release of packaging 26.0rc1 with these improvements and other features like support for pattern matching and pylock files.

Hasty Briefsbeta