Installation error, compiling from source on Oracle Linux

[John D. Gwinner]

I'm installing an app that requires Carbon and some other Python 2.7 features.

The version of Oracle Linux we're using comes with 2.6.

I've read that it is not a good idea to directly update the O/S as it "may break things" so I'm doing make altinstall.

I've downloaded Python-2.7.11
Downloaded zlib-1.2.8
Done
./configure --prefix=/root/Python-2.7.8 --with-libs=/usr/local/lib --disable-ipv6

However, I get an error while compiling.

make altinstall
gcc -pthread -c -fno-strict-aliasing -g -O2 -DNDEBUG -g -fwrapv -O3 -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes  -I. -IInclude -I./Include   -DPy_BUILD_CORE -o Modules/python.o ./Modules/python.c
In file included from Include/Python.h:58,
                 from ./Modules/python.c:3:
Include/pyport.h:256:13: error: #error "This platform's pyconfig.h needs to define PY_FORMAT_LONG_LONG"
make: *** [Modules/python.o] Error 1

I CAN compile without zlib, but then pip gives an error.

python2.7 get-pip.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "get-pip.py", line 19017, in <module>
    main()
  File "get-pip.py", line 194, in main
    bootstrap(tmpdir=tmpdir)
  File "get-pip.py", line 82, in bootstrap
    import pip
zipimport.ZipImportError: can't decompress data; zlib not available

I'd use findRPM but that seems to be 2.7.8, not 2.7.11, and it seems reasonable, if I'm building this, to build the most recent version.

Any ideas? I have web searched this; I found a bug that was closed in 2014, and I just got all new source *right now*.

I'm doing a very vanilla install on Oracle Linux Server release 6.7

Thank you,

                    == John ==