hello everyone.

the core problem was that the 3.x series configure file includes a "-lintl" flag when it discovers the libintl header. in 2.x, this was not the case.

so when configure is checking for wchar_t, the inclusion of -lintl (as opposed to libgnuintl, which is what i have), it fails and returns 0 which is then the SIZEOF_WCHAR_T in the pyconfig.h file.

it turns out Modules/main.c relies more on wchar_t in 3.7 than it does in 3.6.x, which is why i did not see this problem arise when compiling the interpreter to complete module compilation (and tests).

however, in 3.7.x, there is additional use of wchar_t and thus the segmentation faults (allocating 0 bytes).

hope this helps others who may compile the GNU flavour of libintl (see https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnu-utils/2010-07/msg00002.html for more information. i learned a little too).

CHEERS EH