title: What are the possibilities in order to reduce the size of a python virtual environment?
body: <p>How is it possible to reduce the size of a python virtual environment?</p>
  
  <p>This might be:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Removing packages from <code>site_packages</code> but which one can be removed?</li>
  <li>Removing the <code>*.pyc</code> files</li>
  <li>Checking for used files as mentioned here: <a href="https://medium.com/@mojodna/slimming-down-lambda-deployment-zips-b3f6083a1dff" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://medium.com/@mojodna/slimming-down-lambda-deployment-zips-b3f6083a1dff</a></li>
  <li>...</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>What else can be removed or stripped down? Or are there other way?</p>
  
  <p>The use case is for example the upload of the <code>virtualenv</code> to a server with limited space (e.g. <code>AWS Lambda</code> function with 512 MB limit)</p>