Reconfiguring python

Question

I installed Python-2.7.3 with configure --enable-shared, make and install. It so happens that now, I need to reconfigure to include the --with-pydebug option.

While running configure again, do I need to include all the flags I had before? (--enable-shared) or is it okay to configure again with just the additional flags?

Answer 1

configure configures the build from scratch (with minimal support for caching certain results). Therefore, you need to supply all the same flags as before.

When changing configure flags, it is also recommended to do a make distclean to ensure that everything is rebuilt. This is especially important with --with-pydebug since the basic PyObject layout will change.