(In reply to comment #0)

> Additional info:
> 0) Removing the abrt-addon-python package solves this problem.
> 

- abrt-addon-python should depend on python, because it doesn't make sense to install this without python, need to fix this in spec

> 1) I don't really understand what's going on here. This seems to be the first
> time I ran into a .pth file. I'm guessing that syslog (a built-in module) isn't
> yet available in this stage of the python built.

- .pth is meant to be run every time python interpreter is run and this seems to me like python is using some bootstrapping to build/install it's files and as you say, the syslog module is not available

(In reply to comment #1)
> - abrt-addon-python should depend on python, because it doesn't make sense to
> install this without python, need to fix this in spec

It already does. See:
rpm -q --requires abrt-addon-python
[...]  
python(abi) = 2.7
[...]

Just to be clear, the issue that I ran into is that if abrt-addon-python is installed (and therefore python is installed too) building python with rpmbuild isn't possible.

I spent some time looking at this; I'm seeing it both in rawhide (2.7) and on RHEL6 (2.6)

The site.py module looks for ".pth" files in various directories, when it finds a .pth file:
       For each line in the file, either combine it with sitedir to a path
       and add that to known_paths, or execute it if it starts with 'import '.

abrt-addon-python has this file:
  /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/abrt.pth
containing:
  import abrt_exception_handler

It's happening in "make sharedmods", which invokes the freshly-built python binary on the setup.py

In particular, the "syslog" module is built as part of this step.

Verbosely invoking the freshly-built python with "import site" from within the build directory:

  ./python -v -c "import site"

shows a series of imports, all being done from within the build tree.  This is followed by an import of "abrt_exception_handler", which (on RHEL6) goes to
  # /usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/abrt_exception_handler.pyc matches /usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/abrt_exception_handler.py
i.e. it uses the installed python packages tree.

Looking at sys.path (builddir here was "/home/david/coding/cvs-dist/python/RHEL-6/Python-2.6.6"):
  ./python -c "import sys; print sys.path"

we get:
  'import site' failed; use -v for traceback
  ['', '/usr/lib64/python26.zip', '/home/david/coding/cvs-dist/python/RHEL-6/Python-2.6.6/Lib', '/home/david/coding/cvs-dist/python/RHEL-6/Python-2.6.6/Lib/plat-linux2', '/home/david/coding/cvs-dist/python/RHEL-6/Python-2.6.6/Lib/lib-tk', '/home/david/coding/cvs-dist/python/RHEL-6/Python-2.6.6/Lib/lib-old', '/home/david/coding/cvs-dist/python/RHEL-6/Python-2.6.6/Modules', '/home/david/coding/cvs-dist/python/RHEL-6/Python-2.6.6/build/lib.linux-x86_64-2.6', '/home/david/.local/lib/python2.6/site-packages', '/usr/lib64/python2.6/site-packages', '/usr/lib64/python2.6/site-packages/gst-0.10', '/usr/lib64/python2.6/site-packages/gtk-2.0', '/usr/lib64/python2.6/site-packages/webkit-1.0', '/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages']

So it contains the "site-packages" of the installed tree, but not from the builtin packages of the installed tree (and hence the installed Python's "syslog.so" isn't found).

I tried adding "-S" to invocations of ./python, to suppress the implicit "import site" during startup, but it still fails, because:
   Lib/distutils/command/build_ext.py
is importing it explicitly:
  File "/home/david/coding/cvs-dist/python/RHEL-6/Python-2.6.6/Lib/distutils/command/build_ext.py", line 13, in <module>
    from site import USER_BASE, USER_SITE

On my RHEL 6 box:
  $ find /usr/lib*/python2.6 -name "*.pth"
  /usr/lib64/python2.6/site-packages/pygst.pth
  /usr/lib64/python2.6/site-packages/pygtk.pth
  /usr/lib64/python2.6/site-packages/webkit-1.0.pth
  /usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/abrt.pth
and only abrt.pth has an "import line; the others merely list package names.

sys.exec_prefix and sys.prefix are coming out as "/usr/".

They are calculated by Modules/getpath.c:calculate_path

    if (!(pfound = search_for_prefix(argv0_path, home))) {

and:
  (gdb) p pfound
  $24 = -1
which is the return value from search_for_prefix to signify that we're in the build directory (as indeed we are).

This means that calculate_path() falls back to using:
  642        strncpy(prefix, PREFIX, MAXPATHLEN);
and this is set up in the Makefile via:

    Modules/getpath.o: $(srcdir)/Modules/getpath.c Makefile
  	$(CC) -c $(PY_CFLAGS) -DPYTHONPATH='"$(PYTHONPATH)"' \
		-DPREFIX='"$(prefix)"' \
		-DEXEC_PREFIX='"$(exec_prefix)"' \
		-DVERSION='"$(VERSION)"' \
		-DVPATH='"$(VPATH)"' \
		-o $@ $(srcdir)/Modules/getpath.c

This reflects this comment in getpath.c:
     * If we're loading relative to the build directory,
     * return the compiled-in defaults instead.
which seems to have been the case since at least this commit from 1997
  http://svn.python.org/view?view=rev&revision=7775


So as it stands, Python expects when built from its build location to look in /usr/ for python libs, and executes .pth files found in those locations.  ABRT supplies one, and python uses it.

I don't think this is cleanly fixable from the Python side.

One workaround is to not have the abrt-addon-python package installed when building python (does rpm have a BuildConflicts: specfile tag?)

Another may be to move the "import syslog" into the callsites that use it, rather than in module scope.

(In reply to comment #3)
> One workaround is to not have the abrt-addon-python package installed when
> building python (does rpm have a BuildConflicts: specfile tag?)

Yes. For example, adding
    BuildConflicts: abrt-addon-python

will result in
    rpmbuild -bp $SPECS/python.spec
    error: Failed build dependencies:
            abrt-addon-python conflicts with python-2.7.1-5.fc15.i686

if abrt-addon-python is installed.

(Maybe the error should have been "[...] buildconflicts with [...]", but that's off topic.)

or we can just catch this exception in abrt hook..

*** Bug 676661 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Fixed in git, thanks Dave, for the hints, I moved import syslog from the module scope and it seems to fix that problem even though python fails to build on my machine with error:

2 skips unexpected on linux2:
    test_tk test_ttk_guionly
[1130032 refs]
make: *** [test] Error 1
error: Bad exit status from /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.4WULQM (%check)

but that's probably not because of ABRT.

abrt-2.0.3-1.fc15 has been submitted as an update for Fedora 15.
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/abrt-2.0.3-1.fc15

Package abrt-2.0.3-1.fc15:
* should fix your issue,
* was pushed to the Fedora 15 testing repository,
* should be available at your local mirror within two days.
Update it with:
# su -c 'yum update --enablerepo=updates-testing abrt-2.0.3-1.fc15'
as soon as you are able to.
Please go to the following url:
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/abrt-2.0.3-1.fc15
then log in and leave karma (feedback).

abrt-2.0.3-1.fc15 has been pushed to the Fedora 15 stable repository.  If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.