setup-virtualenv on x86_64 Linux Fails on lxml

[dcode]

When creating a virtualenv using the development version of Zine (1311:bddad78eab94) on x86_64 Linux (Ubuntu 9.10), compilation of lxml fails when attempting to link against libxslt/libxml2. It results in the following error:

Building against libxml2/libxslt in the following directory:
   /tmp/easy_install-mEs4pu/lxml-2.2.6/build/tmp/libxml2/lib
/usr/bin/ld: /tmp/easy_install-mEs4pu/lxml-2.2.6/build/tmp/libxml2/lib/libexslt.a(common.o): 
   relocation R_X86_64_32 against `.text' can not be used when making a shared object; recompile with -fPIC
/tmp/easy_install-mEs4pu/lxml-2.2.6/build/tmp/libxml2/lib/libexslt.a: could not read symbols: Bad value
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
error: Setup script exited with error: command 'gcc' failed with exit status 1

This occurs whether or not the system has python-lxml installed. I was able to fix this using CFLAGS=-fPIC ./scripts/setup-virtualenv. This may not be obvious to other users (wasn't obvious to me that it would work). This could be added to the environment in the initial checks before running easy_install of Babel.

Of course, this could be fixed upstream as well, but it makes sense to document it here, too.

[uptimebox]

I can confirm this bug on Debian Squeeze x86_64.

[mcrute]

As stated in the description this is an upstream problem and should be reported there.