I have problems with distutils not detecting when compiler is GCC. It passes "-R" option on command line, which isn't supported by GCC without "-Wl,". In my build environment (I build Python from source), "CC" environment variable is set to "/usr/bin/cc", which actually points to GCC. But distutils simply checks executable name. Also I'd like to use ccache... So, I think, distutils should somehow check __GNUC__ definition instead. Are there any reasons why such detection can't/shouldn't be implemented? I'd like to work on the patch, but at first I'd like to know if it's possible/will be accepted. Also, clang on linux doesn't accept "-R" too: warning: unknown remark option '-R/usr/lib'; did you mean '-Rpass'? [-Wunknown-warning-option]