Problem building Python 2.3.4 on RedHat Enterprise; tcl not found

[Russell E. Owen]

In article <rowen-9CB66D.11191002062004 at nntp6.u.washington.edu>,
 "Russell E. Owen" <rowen at cesmail.net> wrote:

>I'm trying to build Python 2.3.4 from source on a RedHat Enterprise 
>machine for installation in a net-wide accessible directory /net/python. 
>I tried all of the following variants of ./configure (the first was 
>required for Python 2.3.3 on RedHat 9):
>./configure --prefix=/net/python --enable-unicode=ucs4
>./configure --prefix=/net/python
>./configure --prefix=/net/python --enable-unicode=ucs2
>
>All of these result in the ominous message (even the last form, which 
>really surprised me):
>checking for UCS-4 tcl... no

The problems continue...

I decided to try building my own tcl and tk in /net/python. That seemed 
to go perfectly, /net/python/wish8.4 works and stuff is where I expected 
it to be, e.g.:
% ls /net/python/lib
libtcl8.4.so  libtclstub8.4.a  libtk8.4.so  libtkstub8.4.a  python2.3  
tcl8.4  tclConfig.sh  tk8.4  tkConfig.sh

I then edited Python-2.3.4/Modules/Setup:

_tkinter _tkinter.c tkappinit.c -DWITH_APPINIT \
# *** Uncomment and edit to reflect where your Tcl/Tk libraries are:
    -L/net/python/lib \
# *** Uncomment and edit to reflect where your Tcl/Tk headers are:
    -I/net/python/include \
# *** Uncomment and edit to reflect where your X11 header files are:
    -I/usr/X11R6/include \
# *** Or uncomment this for Solaris:
#   -I/usr/openwin/include \
# *** Uncomment and edit for Tix extension only:
#   -DWITH_TIX -ltix8.1.8.2 \
# *** Uncomment and edit for BLT extension only:
#   -DWITH_BLT -I/usr/local/blt/blt8.0-unoff/include -lBLT8.0 \
# *** Uncomment and edit for PIL (TkImaging) extension only:
#     (See http://www.pythonware.com/products/pil/ for more info)
#   -DWITH_PIL -I../Extensions/Imaging/libImaging  tkImaging.c \
# *** Uncomment and edit for TOGL extension only:
#   -DWITH_TOGL togl.c \
# *** Uncomment and edit to reflect your Tcl/Tk versions:
    -ltk8.4 -ltcl8.4 \
# *** Uncomment and edit to reflect where your X11 libraries are:
    -L/usr/X11R6/lib \
# *** Or uncomment this for Solaris:
#   -L/usr/openwin/lib \
# *** Uncomment these for TOGL extension only:
#   -lGL -lGLU -lXext -lXmu \
# *** Uncomment for AIX:
#   -lld \
# *** Always uncomment this; X11 libraries to link with:
    -lX11

But it's no go. I've tried it numerous ways, with make clean, with 
freshly unpacked source code, with
./configure --prefix=/net/python --enable-unicode=ucs4
and with
./configure --prefix=/net/python

and it fails to build with:

Modules/posixmodule.c:6018: the use of `tempnam' is dangerous, better 
use `mkstemp'
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
./python: error while loading shared libraries: libtk8.4.so: cannot open 
shared object file: No such file or directory
make: *** [sharedmods] Error 127

Earlier on it does show _tkinter being built:
...
gcc -pthread -fno-strict-aliasing -DNDEBUG -g -O3 -Wall 
-Wstrict-prototypes -I. -I./Include  -DPy_BUILD_CORE  -DWITH_APPINIT 
-I/net/python/include -I/usr/X11R6/include -c ./Modules/_tkinter.c -o 
Modules/_tkinter.o
...

Any ideas?

-- Russell