Hey, I came across a slight issue with the part of lxml's setup.py that adds a link flag for exslt when libxslt is installed in a directory with a name containing the string 'xslt'. not a huge deal, and probably a somewhat odd case, but I thought I'd mention it. If I understand correctly, to generate the link flag for libexslt, the result of 'xslt-config --libs' is taken and searched for an element containing 'xslt' and a new element is inserted which has 'exslt' instead. setup.py:117: ================================================= xslt_libs = flags('xslt-config --libs') # compile also against libexslt! for i, libname in enumerate(xslt_libs): if 'exslt' in libname: break if 'xslt' in libname: xslt_libs.insert(i, libname.replace('xslt', 'exslt')) break ================================================== In my case, I was working with an install of libxslt in: /home/ltucker/devel/deliverance.buildout/parts/libxslt and 'xslt-config --libs' returns: --------------------------------------------------------------------- -L/home/ltucker/devel/deliverance.buildout/parts/libxslt/lib -L/home/ltucker/devel/deliverance.buildout/parts/libxml2/lib -lxslt -lxml2 -lz -lm --------------------------------------------------------------------- in this case, the snippet above produces a list like --------------------------------------------------------------------- -L/home/ltucker/devel/deliverance.buildout/parts/libexslt/lib -L/home/ltucker/devel/deliverance.buildout/parts/libxslt/lib -L/home/ltucker/devel/deliverance.buildout/parts/libxml2/lib -lxslt -lxml2 -lz -lm --------------------------------------------------------------------- (adding a -L line rather than a -l) The final result was an etree.so that mysteriously didn't have a dependency on libexslt and produced run-time link errors. I believe this problem would apply to the lxml buildout as well, but it doesn't call the parts/libxslt/bin/xslt-config. (Do questions about the lxml buildout go to this list?) As a related side note, it might be nice to have the setup.py complain if 'xslt-config' can't be found. If it isn't around, it appears to silently create an etree.so with no dependencies on libxml2/xslt/exslt. - Luke