Help compiling shared .so on Redhat

[Tom]

I'm attempting to install Python 1.5 from a source tarball, and I need 
to compile into a shared library (.so instead of, or in addition to, the 
.a file produced by default). I've looked through the configure script 
and Makefile, and discovered that there are variables containing the 
correct compile options (-fpic, -shared), but I have been unable to 
figure out how to get the configure/make process to use them.

Thanks.

Tom