python debugging on trunk

[Karl Berry]

Is anyone up for debugging some Python-related test failures on
RHEL-based systems?

Mike Vapier from gentoo made many improvements to the Python support.
(Mike, if you're still out there, would love to hear back.)

Unfortunately, the end result is that 13 tests (listed below) now fail
for me on Alma Linux 8 (and, presumably, Rocky 8; and I believe CentOS 7)
with the trunk automake.

My appetite for (and experience in) debugging Python problems is pretty
low. But we can't make another release until this is fixed. So, I wonder
if there's anyone else who's interested in figuring this out. I can
probably figure out access to a system where it fails, if that's a problem.

I have a suspicion the problem is that on RHEL systems, "python" invokes
"python2" (because that's what the Python maintainers recommend, as I
understand it), but the tests are assuming it invokes "python3".
Knowing Python, I feel pretty sure that there will be many complications
in dealing with this.

Thanks,
Karl

FAIL: t/instmany-python.sh
FAIL: t/nobase-python.sh
FAIL: t/py-compile-basic.sh
FAIL: t/py-compile-basedir.sh
FAIL: t/py-compile-destdir.sh
FAIL: t/py-compile-option-terminate.sh
FAIL: t/python3.sh
FAIL: t/python12.sh
FAIL: t/python-prefix.sh
FAIL: t/python-pr10995.sh
FAIL: t/python-vars.sh
FAIL: t/subobj-pr13928-more-langs.sh

For example, test-suite.log shows this for the nobase-python.sh failure:
..
Byte-compiling python modules...
one.py Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 13, in <module>
AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'implementation'
make: *** [Makefile:304: install-myPYTHON] Error 1