I have found several instances where this question has been asked, but never answered. This is the part where the installation goes wrong
checking for Python files in default path... not found
configure: error: Please specify path to Python distribution files
ERROR: `/tmp/pear/temp/python/configure' failed
I find it slightly retarded that it asks me to specify a path, but doesn't tell me how. Also I'm working under the assumption that "path to Python distributed files" is /usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages.
How do I specify that path in the command pecl install -f python (I had to add the -f because otherwise it refused to install an alpha package)