x86_64-ism in configure, patch idea
configure uses a static path of /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpython.2.7.so for Debian builds - this fails on non-x86_64 architectures.
Please test whether the following configure.ac patch idea (untested!) results in the desired behaviour -- a similar modification has been made to configure directly for a successful build on arm64 (aarch64-linux-gnu) -- but I'm no expert in autoconf, and there may be missing square brackets etc.:
--- a/configure.ac 2018-09-28 09:54:49.000000000 +0200
+++ b/configure.ac 2018-11-09 14:43:48.139848996 +0100
@@ -267,8 +267,11 @@
# on SL7 the file is /usr/lib64/libpython2.7.so
AC_SUBST([PYTHON_ABI_FLAGS], [])
AC_SUBST([PYTHON_LIB_SUFFIX], [so])
-if test -a "/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpython2.7.so" ; then
- AC_SUBST([PYTHON_LIB_LOC], [/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu])
+# make Debian builds aware of architecture
+BUILD_ARCH=`dpkg-architecture -q DEB_BUILD_GNU_TYPE`
+if test -a "/usr/lib/${BUILD_ARCH}/libpython2.7.so" ; then
+ AC_SUBST([PYTHON_LIB_LOC], [/usr/lib/${BUILD_ARCH}])
+ AC_MSG_NOTICE([Using /usr/lib/${BUILD_ARCH}/libpython2.7.so])
elif test -a "/usr/lib64/libpython2.7.so" ; then
AC_SUBST([PYTHON_LIB_LOC], [/usr/lib64])
elif test -a "/opt/local/lib/libpython2.7.dylib" ; then