GDB uses the environment variable PYTHONDONTWRITEBYTECODE to
determine whether or not to write the result of byte-compiling
python modules when the "python dont-write-bytecode" setting
is "auto". Simon noticed that GDB's implementation doesn't
follow the Python documentation.
At present, GDB only checks for the existence of this environment
variable. That is not sufficient though. Regarding
PYTHONDONTWRITEBYTECODE, this document...
https://docs.python.org/3/using/cmdline.html
...says:
If this is set to a non-empty string, Python won't try to write
.pyc files on the import of source modules.
This commit fixes GDB's handling of PYTHONDONTWRITEBYTECODE by adding
an empty string check.
This commit also corrects the set/show command documentation for
"python dont-write-bytecode". The current doc was just a copy
of that for set/show python ignore-environment.
During his review of an earlier version of this patch, Eli Zaretskii
asked that the help text that I proposed for "set/show python
dont-write-bytecode" be expanded. I've done that in addition to
clarifying the documentation of this option in the GDB manual.
24d2cbc42c