I can see the logic of the argument that says the code exists, and should be measured.  But this is changing behavior that has been in place for at least 15 years.

Before this change, code could have had an unreported SyntaxError, but it was code that was being discarded by the optimizer anyway.  How many people are benefiting from those SyntaxErrors?  The only way the code would ever run is if they changed the "if 0:" to something else, at which point they would have seen the SyntaxErrors without this change.

If we keep this change, I will hear from people unhappy with the drop in their coverage measurement.  Have users of the language been complaining that they don't see SyntaxErrors in their optimized-away code?