Broken configure script for solaris in 2.1?

[jason petrone]

I noticed some old threads about problems compiling python2.1 on solaris.

My trial license for the Sun Workshop Compiler ran out, so I had to compile
python with gcc and had the same problems.

It seems to me that the error is around line 583 of configure.in:

SunOS/5*)
  if test "$GCC" = "yes"
  then LDSHARED='$(CC) -shared'
  else LDSHARED="ld -G";
  fi ;;           


`gcc -shared` doesn't seem to work, but using  `gcc -G` or `ld -G` works fine.

I assumed that gcc used whatever linker was available on the system, but now
I'm wondering if it doesn't do linking itself.  If it does, then it would make
sense that this doesn't work, since it shouldn't be able to link archives
built with non-gnu ar and ranlib.

Hope someone knows the right thing to do.  It really would be nice for python
to compile out of the box on solaris/gcc.

-jason