Issue 46381: Improve documentation of CFLAGS_NODIST, LDFLAGS_NODIST (original) (raw)

The documentation of

• https://docs.python.org/3.11/using/configure.html#envvar-CFLAGS
• https://docs.python.org/3.11/using/configure.html#envvar-CFLAGS_NODIST
• https://docs.python.org/3.11/using/configure.html#envvar-LDFLAGS
• https://docs.python.org/3.11/using/configure.html#envvar-LDFLAGS_NODIST should explain more clearly that flags such as -I, -L, etc. and strict compiler flags such as -Werror... should not be put into CFLAGS, LDFLAGS, or it will make the resulting Python unusable for compiling user packages with extension modules via distutils and setuptools.

Various downstream packagers have provided misconfigured Pythons:

• Homebrew (https://trac.sagemath.org/ticket/31132, https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/pull/68528, resolved)
• Cygwin (https://trac.sagemath.org/ticket/33078, https://cygwin.com/pipermail/cygwin/2021-December/250302.html, resolved in a proposed package update)
• pyenv (https://trac.sagemath.org/ticket/32531, https://github.com/pyenv/pyenv/issues/2204, open)

So this appears to be a documentation / user education issue in CPython.

Do you want to propose a PR?