Reminded me of a major “data”/“AI” platform that stripped all empty files when deploying the code. Because of “security” you were not allowed to list files on the deployed instance, nor review the deployment pipeline code or logs (“it just a works/batteries included”).
The most brilliant way to screw all Python developers I’ve ever seen.
Later learnt that the docker container run the code as root, so basically you could destroy the platform from within. Good times.
For context, this is because Python uses __init__.py files to indicate which directories are modules. They can contain contents, but quite often are empty placeholders with meaning. Removing those would make the corresponding Python modules invalid and invisible to the Python module loader.