entry_points['console_scripts'] are really slow for what they do.

[ninjaaron]

I write a lot of shell utilities in python that I expect to execute more or less instantly if they are doing something trivial. On my main, albeit underpowered laptop, I can cut about 0.4 seconds off startup time just by putting a script like this in my path instead of using the script generated by entry_points:

import my_module
my_module.my_entry_function()

In many cases, that 0.4 seconds added by entry_points is longer than the execution time of the entire script without it. I'm not sure what entry_points does, but the speed might be improved by doing less! I'm sure whatever entry_points does, it does for a reason, but would it be possible to add a simpler, faster way to execute scripts as an alternative similar (or not) to the above? I've never peeked under the hood of setuptools, but I'd be happy to work on a patch if I thought it would be accepted.

[jaraco]

Just add import pkg_resources to your script and it will be slow too. See #510.

[ninjaaron]

Oh. Great news.