Building Python 2.4 on machines that do not support dynamic loading

[Robert McLay]

I have been trying to build python on Cray X1.  As far as I can
tell it does not support dynamic loading.  So the question is:

   How to build 2.4 without dynamic loading?

That is: can I build 2.4 where all the extensions are archived in
libpython2.4.a as a static library?

Building on the Cray X1 is slow, so I have been trying to also
build it under Linux without dynamic loading since it 
configures/builds so much faster.

I edited the configure script so that it doesn't know that dlopen 
works.  The file "pyconfig.h" undefines HAVE_DYNAMIC_LOADING
HAVE_LIBDL and so on.  Under linux it still builds .so files
but it gives the following message for all .so files:

   *** WARNING: importing extension "dl" failed with 
   exceptions.AttributeError: 'module' object has no 
   attribute 'load_dynamic'

It seems like it is possible to build python without dynamic
loading as someone build python 2.3 on the X1.  For various
reason I need 2.4, it just not clear what the trick is.

I have done some google group and web searching without success
so I'm asking all you experts to shine some light in this dark
corner.