The --compile option is only useful for Python 2.7

[jsirois]

See here:
https://github.com/pantsbuild/pex/blob/322ab32c83b861ce1ca9c8372246635e7b7b58b4/pex/compiler.py#L24-L42

That's the old way of naming / placing pyc files. Python 3 will be looking under __pycache__ and miss: https://peps.python.org/pep-3147/

As such, for all but Python 2.7, PEXs built with --compile actually run slightly slower since there is just more dead weight to extract from the PEX.