(backport from rev. 54175)

 (backport from rev. 52754)

(damn, it's nice to see the line
  #define PY_VERSION              "2.5"
in patchlevel.h)

adding -fwrapv helps.

news about this and a couple other recent fixes.

expanded tabs
fixed a couple of typos
removed .cvsignore reference

  Itanium2 with HP's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1225212).

to be used for flags that change binary compatibility.

Distutils was tweaked to also use the variable if used during compilation of
the interpreter.

Delete some advice that can never, ever have worked.

There are a couple of XXX comments for bits I don't know how to
update.  It would be really good not to release Python 2.5 with these
in place :)

This file is way too big.  There's basically no chance of it staying
up to date.

Closes SF bug #774480.