Re: 7.2 branch, configure problem, --with-python

[Michael Snyder <msnyder at vmware dot com>]

Thiago Jung Bauermann wrote:
> On Mon, 2010-07-26 at 16:45 -0700, Michael Snyder wrote:
> > Hey folks, I'm having a problem attempting to build the release branch
> > on a 32 bit RHEL5 system.  I've used "--with-python=xyz" to point to a
> > local install directory, but configure tells me it wasn't found.
> >
> > The exact same configuration worked fine in version 7.1.
> >
> > This is my configure command:
> > CFLAGS=-g \
> > LDFLAGS="-Wl,-R/build/toolchain/lin32/ncurses-5.5/lib 
> > -Wl,-R/build/toolchain/lin32/expat-1.95.8/lib 
> > -Wl,-R/build/toolchain/lin32/python-2.5/lib 
> > -Wl,-R/build/toolchain/lin32/zlib-1.2.3-3/lib \
> > $(srcdir)/configure --with-python=/build/toolchain/lin32/python-2.5
> >
> > ... and this is the error message:
> >
> > checking for python2.5... no
> > configure: error: no usable python found at 
> > /build/toolchain/lin32/python-2.5
> > make[1]: *** [configure-gdb] Error 1
>
> You're getting lots of "undefined reference to `__ctype_b'" errors when
> statically linking with libpython2.5.a. I've never seen such error
> myself, but it looks like that it is related to using old versions of
> glibc (like version 2.3 or so). E.g., see:
>
> http://lists.debian.org/debian-glibc/2002/10/msg00340.html
> http://lists.debian.org/debian-glibc/2002/10/msg00093.html

Yes, and it turns out that the binary release of python 2.5 and 2.6.1
were compiled against glibc 2.2.5.

So this problem shows up because we've switched to static linking
(at least for configure).

Isn't this problem showing up for anyone else?  It seems to me that
it will bite anybody who's using a binary release of these versions.