As a general note, I built MatPlotlib-SVN on Leopard against the Apple Python, using the numpy, libz, freetype, and png that are included with Leopard. It seems to work fine, superficially; I have not run extensive regressions with it yet. I can send along a MacPorts portfile (including patches) tomorrow; (my Leopard problem is that SSH won't respond so I can't get to my office machine from home). I have some opinions about your other questions, the answers are to set specific environment variables. However, my answers MIGHT BE WRONG because I can't test these at the moment (see ssh problem, above) So take these responses with some skepticism. But perhaps they can point you in a helpful direction: On Nov 4, 2007, at 6:29 AM, John Hunter wrote: > Now for my next problem: I built zlib, libpng an freetype from source > and I get a > > ld: warning in /Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.4u.sdk/usr/local/lib/ > libpng.dylib, > file is not of required architecture Hmm, what about setting a MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.5 > > error when building mpl. Is there an easy way in the > configure/make/make install cycle to tell the compiler to build > universal binaries? I believe that "generic" autoconf would pick up CFLAGS: CFLAGS="-arch ppc -arch i386" > Alternatively, can I instruct distutils to simply not provide the > -arch ppc build? Distutils uses ARCHFLAGS -- if you are using the Python from Apple Leopard: ARCHFLAGS="-arch i386"