Currently, when creating a virtualenv with the PEP-405 `venv` module, the python-config executable will not be copied/symlinked to the virtualenv. That means for projects that link against the python interpreter, *and* which are built in a venv virtual environment, some custom "magic" has to be done to find the correct `python-config` executable in order to get the full name of libpython. A concrete case I have described in this issue of the cocotb project https://github.com/potentialventures/cocotb/issues/978 Note that finding the correct `python-config` is not trivial because of version and/or ABI version tags that are appended. While it seems we have found a workaround for now, I think it makes sense to make `python-config` itself. My "wish" is to include this feature in the standard library venv module PEP-405. But for reference I'll also link this issue, of the `virtualenv` tool, which discusses a similar wish. Unfortunatly this was closed without progress: https://github.com/pypa/virtualenv/issues/169