It appears that there was a patch for processing -L options in distutils lately, see http://sourceforge.net/patch/?func=detailpatch&patch_id=102971&group_id=5470 so python setup.py build_ext -L/tmp -lbla works now for me. Unfortunately, passing -R is still broken; python setup.py build_ext -L/tmp -R/tmp -lbla gives ... File "/usr/local/lib/python2.0/distutils/unixccompiler.py", line 208, in link (libraries, library_dirs, runtime_library_dirs) = \ File "/usr/local/lib/python2.0/distutils/ccompiler.py", line 438, in _fix_lib_args runtime_library_dirs = (list (runtime_library_dirs) + TypeError: can only concatenate list (not "string") to list Also, I wonder what the rationale is for supporting -L/tmp:/var/tmp, while not supporting the Unixish -L/tmp -L/var/tmp. Regards, Martin