For another thing I'm working on, I needed matplotlib to compile (this is on a slightly difference machine than that of the previous post). Bottom line is this: I needed matplotlib built for x86_64 and i386 and without too much other mumbo-jumbo. I wanted to build this in a virtualenv, because that is how i like things.

Needless to say, matplotlib building is pretty awful (see previous post). It sort of reminds me of py2app.

Of course, all of that being said, part of the problem is due to Apple switching architectures while maintaining backwards compatible support (at least up to OSX 10.5). Anyway, I was finally able to get a working matplot lib (with help from the stackoverflow post here, using the following OSX-specific makefile (note: i installed freetype and libpng from source into /usr/local/)

And the following edits to the ./Makefile that comes with matplotlib (not making these edits builds some shared objects for ppc and i386, which causes problems):

Finally, I built matplotlib with:

make -f osx.make mpl_build
make -f osx.make mpl_install