Here's my configure I need to set ac_cv_fun_utimensat=no and ac_cv_func_futimens=no because presumably the file-system or kernel on my system doesn't support nanosecond timestamps. With these options, and patching the configure/setup.py files to remove references to /usr/lib/ncursesw and replace with my /home/tools/lib path, everything builds just fine. It's during the 'make install' phase of pip that it fails.
./configure --prefix=/home/tools \ --enable-shared \ --with-system-expat \ --with-system-ffi \ --with-ensurepip=install \ ac_cv_func_utimensat=no \ ac_cv_func_futimens=no -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
