The new patch looks good enough.

The main reason I complained about the error message is that it sounds like you need Python in order to build Python. Obviously you need Python to run a modified file like typeslots.py, but there is supposed to be an alternative if you don’t need to regenerate files. I think running “make touch” should fudge the timestamps so that Make does not run it. It works for me:

$ touch Objects/typeslots.py
$ make touch
cd .; \
	hg --config extensions.touch=Tools/hg/hgtouch.py touch -v
Touching Objects/typeslots.inc
$ make  # Does not run typeslots.py
gcc [. . .] Objects/typeobject.c
[. . .]

Unfortunately, I understand “make touch” requires Mercurial, which requires Python 2. That weakens my argument about bootstrapping Python, but it is still valid in some scenarios. Maybe we should recommend “make -t Objects/typeslots.inc” etc instead of “make touch”.