[Python-Dev] Hunting down configure script error

[Christopher Taylor]

Per my conversation with Martin v. Löwis on the python-list, I think I
have found a problem with the configure script and Makefile.in.

For Python 2.4.4 it seems that the arguement --libdir does not change
the Makefile.  Specifically I need this to change the libdir to
/usr/lib64 for RH on a x86_64 machine.

I'd like to contribute a fix for this, but I'm relatively new so I
would appreciate some guidance.

In the Makefile, I tried setting LIBDIR to $(exec_prefix)/lib64 and
SCRIPTDIR to $(prefix)/lib64 manually.  Unfortuantely that created an
error when I ran python2.4:

Could not find platform independent libraries <prefix>
Could not find platform dependent libraries <exec_prefix>
Consider setting $PYTHONHOME to <prefix>[:<exec_prefix>]
'import site' failed; use -v for traceback

so I edited my /etc/profile and included:
export PYTHONHOME = "/usr"

and reran python2.4 and now the only error is:
'import site' failed; use -v for traceback

I poked around in /Modules/getpath.c and I'm starting to understand
how things are comming together.  My question is:  how does $(prefix)
from the congifure script make it into PREFIX in the c code?  I see on
line 106 of /Modules/getpath.c that it checks to see if PREFIX is
defined and if not set's it to "/usr/local".  So I did a grep on
PREFIX from the Python2.4.4 dir level and it didn't return anything
that looks like PREFIX is being set based on the input to the
configure script.  Where might this be happening?  I'm assuming
there's also a similar disconnect for LIBDIR (even though it never
get's set properly in the Makefile, even when I edited it by hand,
those changes don't make it into the code .... but I don't know where
it should be changed in the code.)

Respectfully,
Christopher Taylor