Changing the directory where .pyc files are created
Yes, starting from Python 3.8 you can control this behavior. The original discussion starts from pep 304 in 2003. While this original PEP was withdrawn, a variant of this feature was eventually implemented for Python 3.8 in https://bugs.python.org/issue33499 In the result, you can control using PYTHONPYCACHEPREFIX=path, -X pycache_prefix=path and sys.pycache_prefix.