Feature or enhancement

Proposal:

Remove the unused tokenize._compile function. EDIT: Deprecate the unused tokenize._compile function.

It very much looks like the internal tokenize._compile function hasn't been needed since GH-104323 when it was initially removed, but it was mechanically brought back to tokenize in GH-104722 to fix GH-104719.

From a quick search, it seems that, prior to GH-104323, tokenize._compile was only used internally in tokenize._tokenize.

Most of the fairly fresh code I skimmed through on GitHub operating on tokenize._compile properly checks if Python is version <3.10 / tokenize._compile exists.

Except CheetahTemplate3, so removing tokenize._compile immediately could break them -- we need to deprecate first.

In terms of benefits of removing this at some point: it wouldn't necessarily improve the import time of tokenize as long as re still imports functools to cache template compilation. Therefore, removing tokenize._compile in the future is just a small cleanup that yields no other benefits than smaller, less bloated code.

Has this already been discussed elsewhere?

This is a minor feature, which does not need previous discussion elsewhere

Links to previous discussion of this feature:

No response