Visious hackery to solve a build-control problem related to our use of

distutils for the library modules built as shared objects.  A better solution
appears possible, but with the threat that the distutils becomes more
magical ("complex").
This closes SF bug #458343.

Lib/distutils/command/build_ext.py

@@ -456,6 +456,17 @@ class build_ext (Command):
                                         debug=self.debug,
                                         extra_postargs=extra_args)
 
+        # XXX -- this is a Vile HACK!
+        #
+        # The setup.py script for Python on Unix needs to be able to
+        # get this list so it can perform all the clean up needed to
+        # avoid keeping object files around when cleaning out a failed
+        # build of an extension module.  Since Distutils does not
+        # track dependencies, we have to get rid of intermediates to
+        # ensure all the intermediates will be properly re-built.
+        #
+        self._built_objects = objects[:]
+
         # Now link the object files together into a "shared object" --
         # of course, first we have to figure out all the other things
         # that go into the mix.

setup.py

@@ -172,6 +172,13 @@ class PyBuildExt(build_ext):
                                         self.get_ext_filename(fullname))
             os.remove(ext_filename)
 
+            # XXX -- This relies on a Vile HACK in
+            # distutils.command.build_ext.build_extension().  The
+            # _built_objects attribute is stored there strictly for
+            # use here.
+            for filename in self._built_objects:
+                os.remove(filename)
+
     def get_platform (self):
         # Get value of sys.platform
         platform = sys.platform