Installing Python 2.3.1 on Irix 6.5

[Nick Hawthorn]

I've just installed Python 2.3.1 on a SGI system running Irix 6.5,
using the SGI versions of cc and CC, as the local gcc is broken.
There were a lot of error messages, which seems to be normal.  I'd
like to hear comments about how usable the resulting Python is likely
to be, and how to fix some of the install errors.  So far I don't
know Python.  I plan to learn it on this system, which is also where
it is needed.

Here is how I did the installation:-
    [ extract a fresh copy of all the files from Python-2.3.1.tgz ]
    configure  --with-cxx=CC  1>../configure.log  2>../configure.err
    [ edit makefile so that 
            prefix=		/dept/med_psyc/nhn/python
      because I don't have root access.  Later the sysadmin may be
      persuaded to install Python for everyone.
    ]
    make                      1>../make.log       2>../make.err
    make test                 1>../maketest.log   2>../maketest.err
    make install              1>../install.log    2>../install.err

Output from the configure command included these error messages:-
configure: WARNING: term.h: present but cannot be compiled
configure: WARNING: term.h: check for missing prerequisite headers?
configure: WARNING: term.h: proceeding with the preprocessor's result
configure: WARNING:     ## ------------------------------------ ##
configure: WARNING:     ## Report this to bug-autoconf at gnu.org. ##
configure: WARNING:     ## ------------------------------------ ##
I did send off a bug report; the very nice reply said "This issue is
known, and is being addressed."  I reckon term.h needs to have
curses.h included before it.  This causes quite a few error mesages.

Output from "make test" finished with this summary:-
209 tests OK.
8 tests failed:
    test___all__ test_coercion test_locale test_logging test_mimetools
    test_socket test_sundry test_urllib2
38 tests skipped:
    test_aepack test_al test_asynchat test_bsddb test_bsddb185
    test_bsddb3 test_bz2 test_cd test_cl test_curses test_dl
    test_email_codecs test_gdbm test_gl test_gzip test_imgfile
    test_ioctl test_linuxaudiodev test_macfs test_macostools test_mpz
    test_nis test_normalization test_ossaudiodev test_pep277
    test_plistlib test_pty test_scriptpackages test_socket_ssl
    test_socketserver test_sunaudiodev test_timeout test_urllibnet
    test_winreg test_winsound test_zipfile test_zipimport test_zlib
Ask someone to teach regrtest.py about which tests are
expected to get skipped on irix6.

All comments welcome.  Sorry this is so long.

Thanks in advance,
Nick Hawthorn        nhn at hpc2 dot auckland dot ac dot nz