A SANE scanner backend written in Python?

[Lonnie Princehouse]

Recompile Python and SANE with debugging enabled, if you haven't
already. That should allow you to trace back to the source of the error
using gdb (or your favorite gdb front-end).  AFAIK there's no inherent
reason that embedding Python in a shared library wouldn't work.    Did
you try compiling the outline of the shared library without the
PyInitialize call?  Is it possible that the segfault had nothing to do
with python?