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1. clacke (clacke@social.heldscal.la)'s status on Thursday, 07-Dec-2017 04:20:31 EST clacke
   I had a discussion with a colleague whether it's ok to put a Python import deep in a function, in a conditional.
   
   He explained that pkg_resources takes 300 ms to load. It basically examines your whole sys.path on import. Pretty annoying when all you want to use it for is just to resolve a path relative to your egg.
   
   So ok, *that* import you can put deep in your function. Otherwise I prefer them all to be at the top and pretend they're declarative.
   
   Looked around and found this still-open issue from last year. Potentially it takes over a second to import, depending on what's on your sys.path and whether your eggs are zipped, etc:
   
   https://github.com/pypa/setuptools/issues/510
   
   > [re: importing pygments]
   
   > with pkg_resources, 244 ms
   > without pkg_resources, 2.65 ms
   
   > So just by importing pkg_resources, the slowdown is ~100x. In wall clock time, I have consistently tested the pkg_resources overhead to be at least 150 - 200 ms. This makes pkg_resoucres (sic!) unusable in command line utilities that require fast start up times.
   1. ay (ayy@gs.smuglo.li)'s status on Thursday, 07-Dec-2017 04:25:16 EST ay

      in reply to
      @clacke And tensorflow with gpu support takes multiple seconds to get going.