Building numpy for my company's solaris distribution involves requring a run_path for the lapack+blas libraries we're using (libsunperf, though I'm considering swapping out for gsl since we may use that). The situation we're in is that we need gcc to get the -R for paths like /usr/local/gnu/lib /usr/local/python2.5.1/lib, etc. but the default python distutils raise a not implemented exception on this. Since it doesn't appear that the numpy distutils subclass the ccompiler, my solution is this for now (in numpy/distutils/ccomiler): def gen_lib_options(compiler, library_dirs, runtime_library_dirs, libraries): r = _distutils_gen_lib_options(compiler, library_dirs, [], libraries) if len(runtime_library_dirs) > 0: r.extend([ "-R%s" % lib for lib in runtime_library_dirs ]) lib_opts = [] for i in r: if is_sequence(i): lib_opts.extend(list(i)) else: lib_opts.append(i) return lib_opts This allows me to specify -R options on the command line with build_ext without destroying the build. I'm pretty sure that "-R" should be replaced with a lookup somewhere for the platform-appropriate way to do this, but this does work. Let me know if there's a better way to do this, but if not can this be incorporated into numpy's distutils? Thanks, -Peter -- The 5 year plan: In five years we'll make up another plan. Or just re-use this one.