Help please, turning off threads

[Jive]

I've ported Python to a realtime operating system and embedded it in an
application that controls machinery.  Python will be used to expose an API
to end users.  It seems prudent to disable threads.

I undefined WITH_THREAD.  Now I run into this in threadmodule.c:

#error "Error!  The rest of Python is not compiled with thread support."
#error "Rerun configure, adding a --with-threads option."
#error "Then run `make clean' followed by `make'."

Problem is, I've never run configure, and probably could not if I wanted to.
I used the NT distribution and hacked it into submission. All the Python
source code I'm using is now checked into a source control system.  I doubt
that "configure" could handle that.    I don't use "make" either.

Can someone tell me how to "configure" for no threads by hand?  Does it
suffice just to remove the offending file threadmodule.c? If that is the
case, why the error message rather than just

#ifndef WITH_THREAD
#else
  // the thread stuff
#endif

I removed the file from the project just to see what would happen.  The
project built without reporting an error, and the program seems to run
Python okay.