Why no libpython2.x.so in redhat?

[Kragen Sitaker]

spam at fisher.forestry.uga.edu (Chris Fonnesbeck) writes:
> I'm just trying to figure out why my program is running fine on
> Debian, but not on RedHat.  Here's some simple code that illustrates
> what is not working:

The standard Python distribution builds itself in a brain-dead
fashion: all the code that implements the Python language is
statically linked into the interpreter binary and also available in a
static-linking library.  The result is that other programs that embed
Python must also incorporate that library, which is about 3.5M in 2.1.1.

The Debian guys presumably figured this was too brain-dead to support
(I'm not sure if Debian policy says something about it, or the
maintainer of the Debian package just fixed it because it was broken)
and fixed Python to put all the Python goodness in a shared library so
all applications that embed Python, such as the Python interpreter,
can share it.

Red Hat has presumably used the standard Python release without
building a shared library.