python setup.py problem [solved]

[Wichmann, Mats D]

>> That's actually a long-standing "bug" (quoted because SuSE
>> don't seem to agree it's a bug), that you need the -dev
>> package to perform the basic Python functionality of
>> installing something.... 
>
>That's obviously not a bug. Debian, and most likely other distribution
>do the same.
>
>The reason why you have foo and foo-dev (whatever foo is) is that
>there are things that you don't need to run a program, and that are
>only needed to compile them.
>
>If you install a library, say kdelibs, you don't need the header files
>to run KDE, so your distribution can provide you a package kdelibs
>without the header files, and the header files in a -dev package. This
>-dev package is usefull if you're a KDE application developper or if
>you want to compile a KDE application manually.
>
>Similarly, if I do "aptitude install bzr", I don't need anything to
>compile a python program, so my system doesn't install it. The -dev
>package is needed if you want to compile an application manually.

Right.  So I'm perfectly fine with the bits needed to compile
C-language Python extensions (headers, library) being in the
-dev package.  Lots and lots of Python packages need to be
able to run "python setup.py install" without compiling a thing,
however, which makes it seem like that should not fail if only
the base python package is installed.  It's likely that
python-dev depends on a whole bunch of other stuff that one
may not care about to just install a bit of python code.