Python has recently added a new configure argument called --enable-optimizations, one of the relevant issues is https://bugs.python.org/issue26359.

The new argument will turn on compile time optimizations relevant to production builds. Currently this turns on profile guided optimizations (PGO). PGO builds will take a lot longer (possible 20-40 minutes) to produce, but the resulting Python binary is about 10% faster at executing Python code (according to Python's new benchmark suite).

The new configure flag is available in the recently released Python 3.6.0b4 and was backported to the 3.5 and 2.7 branches, so it should become available in Python 2.7.13 and 3.5.3.

In the future the Python developers may decide to turn on further optimizations based on this argument, for example link-time optimizations (LTO), though they haven't worked out all the bugs for that one yet.

I think the docker images should use this argument, to benefit from the added optimizations.

Thoughts?