Patch 1 does not apply to 2.7. The offending commit 88a532a31eb3 was not made in that branch.

Patch 2 may apply to 2.7, but I am not sure if it is needed or worthwhile. Again, the offending commit r86731 not made to 2.7. There is also a $(BINLIBDEST)/config reference for Be OS; surely if one is updated the other should too.

David: I don’t understand “Patch2 makes test_distutils worse because LDSHARED refers to a file that only exists when Python is installed.” At the moment, doesn’t LDSHARED refer to a file that never exists? So at least the test will be improved when Python is installed, right?

I looked into the test_distutils failures and here’s what I found:

* Revision c958678720fd assigns BLDSHARED → LDSHARED in distutils if the source tree is detected. This survived in the 3.5 branch, so may explain why the 3.5 buildbot failure mentions “./Modules/ld_so_aix”.

* In 2.7, revision fa69e891edf4 moved the assignment into sysconfig.py.

* Then be3b4aa2ad28 loads LDSHARED from _sysconfigdata.py, which is created by sysconfig.py with the alternative BLDSHARED → LDSHARED value. This explains “./Modules/ld_so_aix” in 2.7.

* In 3.6, c554194240fc (Issue 18235) reversed the assignment in sysconfig.py, which now assigns LDSHARED → BLDSHARED, and creates _sysconfigdata.py with this alternative value.

* Then 3fa8aebed636 loads LDSHARED directly from _sysconfigdata.py. In this case it is the original LDSHARED value, so the 3.6 buildbot failure refers to /usr/local/lib/python3.6/config/ld_so_aix.