Problem with AX_PYTHON_DEVEL on top of a debug build of Python

[Jean-Pierre Flori]

Dear all,

As we remarked at Sage's Trac ticket #13867
(http://trac.sagemath.org/sage_trac/ticket/13867), one of the package
Sage uses -- pynac -- fails to build on top of a debug build of Python
because of the AX_PYTHON_DEVEL autoconf macro which tests for the
distutils module by checking that the stderr output is empty, what is
not the case with a debug build of Python.

Although the solution we have opted for is to patch Python in debug
mode so that it does not spit anything on stderr, and as one
consequence pynac builds, it would be nice to be able to use
AX_PYTHON_DEVEL on top of a debug build of Python.

Best,

-- 
Jean-Pierre Flori