title: Compiling .py files to .pyo without resorting to a wrapper script
body: <p>i am looking into compiling quite a big set of python modules and packages to pyo. I know this is possible by either setting the PYTHONOPTIMIZE environment variable or by specifying -O on launch. I'd like to enforce pyo instead of pyc to yield the smallest footprint possible. In order to do that in my deploy module i have to create a wrapper script that launches the actual script with the -O option, because the environment variable needs to be specified prior to starting the interpreter.</p>
  
  <p>Is there any way around this and enforce pyo creation programmatically?</p>
  
  <p>Kind regards,
  Thorsten</p>