> Your suggestion for using the CC variable to fix the problem that I 
> reported won't work - I already tried it and based on what others are 
> reporting, you are beating a dead horse. Believe me I would rather not 
> modify anyone's code in order to build something. The problem is that 
> the CC variable doesn't fix the link stages

Why is that? It should work fine.

> and overall your autconf 
> build is broken particularly as it relates to flowing variables down to 
> sub builds.

This I don't understand. What is a sub build?

> I don't know why you are resisting this change. I took the time to 
> report the bug, proposed a fix /_*and*_/ contributed the patch that 
> would make the Python build process more standard relative to the vast 
> majority of open source packages that use autoconf.

I don't think that's the case. In autoconf, if you specify CFLAGS,
you expect that this overrides, not adds to, anything configure
computes on its own. This patch does not do that, i.e. it doesn't
allow you to override the settings that configure computes.

I'm concerned that the patch merely makes the entire setup more
complex, rather than solving an actual technical problem. That's
why I'm resisting to accept it.