There are two recent reports of build failures of Python 3.0 on OS X 
10.5.5: see

http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2008-November/514159.html

and

http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-3000/2008-December/015404.html

It seems likely that these are related.  For both reports the build 
eventually fails with something like:

gcc  Python.framework/Versions/3.0/Python -o python.exe \
			Modules/python.o \
			 -ldl
make: *** [sharedmods] Error 1

I can reproduce this in the py3k branch and release30-maint branch on my 
Macbook by doing (at a Terminal prompt):

export LC_CTYPE="UTF-8"
./configure && make

I'll try to find time to look at this; any and all help welcomed!

You asked how my locale looked, I've got:

10-92-86-47:Python-3.0 nelis$ locale
LANG=
LC_COLLATE="C"
LC_CTYPE="UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="C"
LC_MONETARY="C"
LC_NUMERIC="C"
LC_TIME="C"
LC_ALL=

So I the LC_CTYPE is indeed UTF-8. I can also confirm that I can make if
I first run `export LC_CTYPE="nl_BE.UTF-8"' (the setting a friend of
mine has). I still get the following error, but I think it is unrelated
and I can ignore it and go on:

Failed to find the necessary bits to build these modules:
_gdbm              ossaudiodev        readline        
spwd

Afterwards I have been playing around with internationalization a bit,
trying to change the LC_CTYPE. Changing it to "United States
(Computer)", or to "Belgium (Dutch)" changed the other locale settings
to nl_be.UTF-8 but not the LC_CTYPE. The problem might be in OSX, but it
is still strange that this makes building in python impossible.

Thanks for the information, nelis!

This appears to be a duplicate of issue 2173.  Further analysis should go 
there.