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On HP-UX 11.* (here: 11.23), configure chooses "ld -b" for extension modules like unicodedata.so.
My $LDFLAGS contains instructions like "-Wl,+b<path>"
(run-time search path for shared libs). This is correct, because LDFLAGS should be passed to the compiler.
distutils compiles the extension modules with "cc" (I need to use the native compiler), then it links with
ld -b $(LDFLAGS) -I.... ...
These means that options like -Wl, and -I<include-path> are passed to the linker!
To solve this problem quickly, I propose to modify configure. If LDSHARED="cc -b", Python 2.5 compiles.
Though this works very godd with with current HP-UX compilers, it does not work with ancient HP-UX compiler suites. Maybe there should be a test in configure in order to see if LDSHARED works.
If you really want to support old HP-UX compilers,
distutils should not 
- pass $LDFLAGS containing "-Wl," to "ld" nor 
- call the linker with -I<includepath>.
This is the current state of the linker call:
ld -b -L/usr/local/python/2.5/lib/hpux32 -Wl,+b,/usr/local/python/2.5/lib/hpux32:/usr/local/devel/readline/5.1-static/lib/hpux32:/usr/local/ssl/lib:/usr/local/devel/bzip-1.0.3/lib/hpux32:/usr/local/devel/berkeleydb/4.3.29-static/lib:/usr/local/lib/hpux32 -L/usr/local/devel/readline/5.1-static/lib/hpux32 -Wl,+b,/usr/local/devel/readline/5.1-static/lib/hpux32:/usr/local/ssl/lib:/usr/local/devel/bzip-1.0.3/lib/hpux32:/usr/local/devel/berkeleydb/4.3.29-static/lib:/usr/local/lib/hpux32 -L/usr/local/ssl/lib -Wl,+b,/usr/local/ssl/lib:/usr/local/devel/bzip-1.0.3/lib/hpux32:/usr/local/devel/berkeleydb/4.3.29-static/lib:/usr/local/lib/hpux32 -L/usr/local/devel/bzip-1.0.3/lib/hpux32 -Wl,+b,/usr/local/devel/bzip-1.0.3/lib/hpux32:/usr/local/devel/berkeleydb/4.3.29-static/lib:/usr/local/lib/hpux32 -L/usr/local/devel/berkeleydb/4.3.29-static/lib -Wl,+b,/usr/local/devel/berkeleydb/4.3.29-static/lib:/usr/local/lib/hpux32 -L/usr/local/lib/hpux32 -Wl,+b,/usr/local/lib/hpux32 -I. -I/soft/python/python-2.5/Python-2.5/Include -I/usr/local/include -I/usr/local/devel/berkeleydb/4.3.29-static/include -I/usr/local/devel/bzip-1.0.3/include -I/usr/local/ssl/include -I/usr/local/devel/readline/5.1-static/include build/temp.hp-ux-B.11.23-ia64-2.5/soft/python/python-2.5/Python-2.5/Modules/readline.o -L/usr/lib/termcap -L/usr/local/python/2.5/lib -L/usr/local/lib -lreadline -o build/lib.hp-ux-B.11.23-ia64-2.5/readline.so

I personally wouldn't have any issues with breaking old HPUX installations if that helps current ones.

No activity on this issue since 2007; HP-UX 11.23 was released in 2003. Closing as outdated.