> Whether or not includedir and libdir are supposed to allow multiple packages is beyond me at this
> point so I'll change the topic to more reflect the problem I am having.  More importantly (and
> possibly related to includedir and libdir) is the fact that python 2.7 does not allow specifying
> multiple lib and include directories in linux.  Is there one way to do this that I overlooked? I
> included the bit about includedir, libdir, CFLAGS, and LDFLAGS in my original post to show what I
> tried.

At present I know less than you about these.  Maybe Martin can chime in?

If it’s not possible to use multiple directories to configure Python, then it’s a limitation, and changing it would qualify as a new feature given our policy, and as such be inappropriate for 2.7.