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related to http://bugs.python.org/issue11715
python 2.7 and 3.1 now include a patch for behavior specific to Ubuntu and Debian to search in multiarch directories for libraries needed for building stdlib extensions.
This distro-specific patch is unnecessary if instead python could just query and use the default search path from the compiler.
With gcc, it's possible to query the list of built-in library directories with:
$ gcc -print-search-dirs | sed -n -e's/libraries: =//p' | sed -e's/:/\n/g' | xargs -n1 readlink -f
and the include directories with:
$ gcc -v -E - < /dev/null 2>&1 | awk '/^#include/,/^End of search/ {i=1} i==1 && /^ / {print}'
(additional filtering, to exclude compiler-internal directories, may be sensible.)
Having python query and use these directories when searching for libraries would make the build system more robust in a variety of circumstances.

Do you know if all compilers supported by CPython have a similar option?

I don't think so. But maybe it would be enough to special case GCC as a unix compiler? At least there are already autoconf checks trying to detect gcc.

> But maybe it would be enough to special case GCC as a unix compiler?
> At least there are already autoconf checks trying to detect gcc.
Yes, we could try that. Steve, would you like to propose a patch?