Need pixie dust for building Python 2.4 curses module on Solaris 8

[skip at pobox.com]

I'm having no success building the curses module on Solaris 8 (yes, I know
it's ancient - advancing the state-of-the-art is not yet an option) for
Python 2.4.  Sun provides an apparently ancient version of curses in
/usr/lib, so I downloaded and installed ncurses 5.5, both using default
settings and using --with-shared.  When the curses module is linked against
libcurses.so I get some strange error about acs32map being undefined (which
appears to live in a couple termcap-ish files in /usr/lib).  When the curses
module is linked against libncurses.a I get bazillions of linker errors like
this:

    Text relocation remains                 referenced
        against symbol          offset      in file
    table.0                     0x41        /opt/app/nonc++/ncurses-5.5/lib/libncurses.a(lib_color.o)
    hls_palette                 0x2dc       /opt/app/nonc++/ncurses-5.5/lib/libncurses.a(lib_color.o)
    cga_palette                 0x2e3       /opt/app/nonc++/ncurses-5.5/lib/libncurses.a(lib_color.o)
    hls_palette                 0x5e0       /opt/app/nonc++/ncurses-5.5/lib/libncurses.a(lib_color.o)
    cga_palette                 0x5e7       /opt/app/nonc++/ncurses-5.5/lib/libncurses.a(lib_color.o)
    <unknown>                   0xc9e       /opt/app/nonc++/ncurses-5.5/lib/libncurses.a(lib_color.o)
    <unknown>                   0xcb7       /opt/app/nonc++/ncurses-5.5/lib/libncurses.a(lib_color.o)
    <unknown>                   0x18        /opt/app/nonc++/ncurses-5.5/lib/libncurses.a(lib_mouse.o)

The build step and output from distutils are:

    $ python ../setup.py build_ext --include-dirs=/opt/app/nonc++/ncurses-5.5/include --rpath=/opt/app/nonc++/ncurses-5.5/lib --library-dirs=/opt/app/nonc++/ncurses-5.5/lib
    running build_ext
    INFO: Can't locate readline library
    INFO: Can't locate Tcl/Tk libs and/or headers
    building '_curses' extension
    gcc -fno-strict-aliasing -DNDEBUG -g -O3 -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -fPIC -I. -I/home/ink/skipm/src/python-svn/release24-maint/./Include -I/opt/app/g++lib6/python-2.4/include -I/usr/local/include -I/opt/app/nonc++/ncurses-5.5/include -I/opt/app/g++lib6/python-2.4/include/python2.4 -c /home/ink/skipm/src/python-svn/release24-maint/Modules/_cursesmodule.c -o build/temp.solaris-2.8-i86pc-2.4/home/ink/skipm/src/python-svn/release24-maint/Modules/_cursesmodule.o
    /home/ink/skipm/src/python-svn/release24-maint/Modules/_cursesmodule.c: In function `PyCursesWindow_GetStr':
    /home/ink/skipm/src/python-svn/release24-maint/Modules/_cursesmodule.c:822: warning: implicit declaration of function `mvwgetnstr'
    gcc -shared build/temp.solaris-2.8-i86pc-2.4/home/ink/skipm/src/python-svn/release24-maint/Modules/_cursesmodule.o -L/opt/app/g++lib6/python-2.4/lib -L/usr/local/lib -L/opt/app/nonc++/ncurses-5.5/lib -Wl,-R/opt/app/nonc++/ncurses-5.5/lib -lncurses -o build/lib.solaris-2.8-i86pc-2.4/_curses.so

Any ideas what's wrong and what I need to do to correct the problem?

Thx,

Skip