I tried applying nijel's 2.3.2 patch to Python 2.6.2 Makefile.pre.in,
then configure/make/install with --bindir and --libdir flags to
./configure.  It works in terms of producing the correct Makefile with
LIBDIR and BINDIR that I want, but I get problems after the "make
install" step when I launch the Python interpreter.  This is what happens:

Could not find platform independent libraries <prefix>
Could not find platform dependent libraries <exec_prefix>
Consider setting $PYTHONHOME to <prefix>[:<exec_prefix>]
'import site' failed; use -v for traceback
Python 2.6.2 (r262:71600, May 15 2009, 22:46:19)
[GCC 4.1.2 20080704 (Red Hat 4.1.2-44)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

I can work around bad imports and "could not find libraries" by adding
various subdirs of my desired LIBDIR to PYTHONHOME and PYTHONPATH.  But
the point is -- I thought that a *properly* installed Python
distribution should know where to find its own standard libraries??  I
should not have to hack PYTHONHOME and PYTHONPATH to get my local
install to work... right?

Once upon a time in 2.5.x days, I was able to do a local install using
only ./configure --prefix, and that's it.  No hacking PYTHONHOME or
PYTHONPATH that I recall.

How is the path to stuff like site.py getting encoded in the Python
installation?  Because I suspect that although nijel's patch may work
for generating makefiles that put binaries/libs in the right place, that
encoding step is still getting botched, requiring to manually set
PYTHONHOME and PYTHONPATH as a workaround.

Or maybe I am just confused.