building C++ extensions with python configured
--without-cxx fails, because the installed
config/Makefile has CXX set to the empty string.
However at least on Linux it does work to build the
python binary without C++ for not depending on
libstdc++ but load/build a module which depends on
libstdc++ (which gets linked by g++).

Editing the generated config/Makefile does solve the
problem.
Another solution might be to pass LDSHARED in the
environment to distutils as it is already done for CC,
CFLAGS, etc, but this requires interaction by the
builder of the module.

--- Lib/distutils/sysconfig.py~ 2003-02-10
15:02:33.000000000 +0100
+++ Lib/distutils/sysconfig.py  2004-02-03
10:53:21.000000000 +0100
@@ -153,6 +153,10 @@
             cc = os.environ['CC']
         if os.environ.has_key('CXX'):
             cxx = os.environ['CXX']
+        if os.environ.has_key('LDSHARED'):
+            ldshared = os.environ['LDSHARED']
+        if os.environ.has_key('CCSHARED'):
+            ccshared = os.environ['CCSHARED']
         if os.environ.has_key('CPP'):
             cpp = os.environ['CPP']
         else: