> distutils sure knows how to build .o or .so files, but I don’t know
> about standalone executables (because I don’t know how the .o end up
> making an executable).  If you want to try to do it, I would advise
> you not to use the config command but rather a compiler object
> directly.  distutils.ccompiler.new_compiler() should give you an
> instance of a subclass of distutils.ccompiler.CCompiler suitable for
> your system, and then you can use help or the source to find what
> methods to call.

Well, config._link() seems to do what is needed here. If you think it is
bad to rely on it, perhaps we should "inline" its code somehow in the
test module.