It's always bothered me that python's Makefile outputs: case $MAKEFLAGS in \ *-s*) CC='gcc -pthread' LDSHARED='gcc -pthread -shared' OPT='-DNDEBUG -g -O3 -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes' ./python -E ./setup.py -q build;; \ *) CC='gcc -pthread' LDSHARED='gcc -pthread -shared' OPT='-DNDEBUG -g -O3 -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes' ./python -E ./setup.py build;; \ esac Maybe it does this for a good reason I don't know about :) In case there isn't, here's a one-line patch to fix it.