Antoine Pitrou wrote:
> Second, the patch allows me to do a 32-bit build (under 64-bit Linux) by
> doing:
>   CFLAGS=-m32 LDFLAGS=-m32 ./configure
> rather than:
>   CC="gcc -m32" ./configure
> However, if I omit LDFLAGS it doesn't work, I don't know if it's intended.

Without the patch,

 BASECFLAGS=-m32 LDFLAGS=-m32 ./configure

should work the same way.

LDFLAGS defines the linker options, CFLAGS the compiler options,
and since both tools have to know that you're generating 32-bit code,
you have to pass the option to both env vars.

> Third, while the 32-bit build does work, the shared objects are still
> placed in a directory called "lib.linux-x86_64-2.7", which I suppose is
> wrong:

That's a side-effect of distutils using os.uname() for determining
the platform. It doesn't know that you're actually telling the
compiler to build a 32-bit binary.

On some platforms you can use these commands to emulate 32- or
64-bit environments:

$ linux32 python -c 'import os; print os.uname()'
('Linux', 'newton', '2.6.22.19-0.4-default', '#1 SMP 2009-08-14 02:09:16 +0200', 'i686')
$ linux64 python -c 'import os; print os.uname()'
('Linux', 'newton', '2.6.22.19-0.4-default', '#1 SMP 2009-08-14 02:09:16 +0200', 'x86_64')