MySQL-python build griefs

[Will Ware]

I'm trying to build MySQL-python on a Red Hat 6.2 box. In order
not to confuse the Red Hat installation, which depends heavily
on Python, I've left Python at 1.5.2. I have Distutils 1.0.1
installed. The version of MySQL-python is 0.3.0. To get things
to work at all, I needed to build my own copy of Python-1.5.2/*
to populate the /usr/include/python1.5 tree, running "configure"
to produce a suitable "config.h". Now I'm getting an error on
"python setup.py build" that looks like this:

running build
running build_py
not copying MySQLdb.py (output up-to-date)
not copying CompatMysqldb.py (output up-to-date)
running build_ext
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "setup.py", line 90, in ?
    extra_objects=extra_objects,
  File "/usr/lib/python1.5/site-packages/distutils/core.py", line 138, in setup
    dist.run_commands()
  File "/usr/lib/python1.5/site-packages/distutils/dist.py", line 829, in run_commands
    self.run_command(cmd)
  File "/usr/lib/python1.5/site-packages/distutils/dist.py", line 849, in run_command
    cmd_obj.run()
  File "/usr/lib/python1.5/site-packages/distutils/command/build.py", line 106, in run
    self.run_command(cmd_name)
  File "/usr/lib/python1.5/site-packages/distutils/cmd.py", line 328, in run_command
    self.distribution.run_command(command)
  File "/usr/lib/python1.5/site-packages/distutils/dist.py", line 849, in run_command
    cmd_obj.run()
  File "/usr/lib/python1.5/site-packages/distutils/command/build_ext.py", line 200, in run
    customize_compiler(self.compiler)
  File "/usr/lib/python1.5/site-packages/distutils/sysconfig.py", line 106, in customize_compiler
    (cc, opt, ccshared, ldshared, so_ext) = \
  File "/usr/lib/python1.5/site-packages/distutils/sysconfig.py", line 368, in get_config_vars
    func()
  File "/usr/lib/python1.5/site-packages/distutils/sysconfig.py", line 274, in _init_posix
    parse_makefile(filename, g)
  File "/usr/lib/python1.5/site-packages/distutils/sysconfig.py", line 207, in parse_makefile
    value = value[:m.start()] + done[n] + after
TypeError: illegal argument type for built-in operation

Am I using the wrong color duct tape here? Or just not enough
bubblegum?

-- 
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 22nd century: Esperanto, geodesic | Will Ware
 domes, hovercrafts, metric system | wware at world.std.com