Hello, attached is a patch for pyhton.jam which allows to use python installation on Unix which have been configured with different prefix and exec-prefix. Currently this is not supported by boost.build. The patch simply adds the missing include directory to the compiler command line as recommended in http://www.python.org/doc/2.3.4/api/includes.html . After applying the patch you can either use bjam -sPYTHON_ROOT=<prefix> or bjam -sPYTHON_ROOT=<prefix> -sPYTHON_EXEC_ROOT=<exec prefix> Markus --- net/src/orig/boost_1_31_0/tools/build/v1/python.jam 2004-01-28 23:52:25.000000000 +0100 +++ local/src/boost_1_31_0/tools/build/v1/python.jam 2004-07-28 16:15:37.000000000 +0200 @@ -118,7 +118,7 @@ { PYTHON_ROOT ?= /usr/local ; PYTHON_ROOT = $(PYTHON_ROOT:J=" ") ; - PYTHON_INCLUDES ?= $(PYTHON_ROOT)/include/python$(PYTHON_VERSION) ; + PYTHON_INCLUDES ?= $(PYTHON_ROOT)/include/python$(PYTHON_VERSION) $(PYTHON_EXEC_ROOT)/include/python$(PYTHON_VERSION) ; PYTHON_LIB_PATH ?= $(PYTHON_ROOT)/lib/python$(PYTHON_VERSION)/config ; PYTHON_PROPERTIES ?=