building an extension module with autotools?

[Michael George]

Hello,

(Please CC me in replies, as I am off-list)

I'm building an application (a game) in python, with a single C module 
containing some performance-critical code.  I'm trying to figure out the 
best way to set it up to build.  Distutils seems to be designed only for 
building and distributing code that lives in site-packages.  I'd prefer 
not to install it in the global site-packages, but rather group all of 
the files together.

I've tried using automake, however I'm worried about libtool not getting 
the options right while building my module.  It seems to me like the 
ideal frankenstein monster would be for automake to invoke distutils to 
do the actual building.  However I'm relatively new to both autotools 
and distutils, so getting this rigged up has been a bit of a challenge.  
Can anybody point me to a good example of something like this or give me 
any pointers?

Thanks!

--Mike