I am trying to build Python from source and need to include the SSL module for my web scraper to work with it.
I ran into the problem of SSL not being found, so I downloaded and built OpenSSL from source. The problem is, I need to install the development libraries along with OpenSSL in order for Python to run the -lssl parameter correctly when running make. I can't seem to find any documentation on how to build OpenSSL with the development libs, even though I'm sure it's got to be something simple I'm just missing.
I must do this from source; with no package managers. I have my reasons.
EDIT:
I have changed a few of the python configuration settings to try and fix the problem, and this is the compile error I am getting now:

gcc -pthread  -Xlinker -export-dynamic -o python \
                Modules/python.o \
                libpython2.7.a -lpthread -ldl  -lutil -L/home/[username]/openssl-src -lssl -lcrypto   -lm
libpython2.7.a(posixmodule.o)(.text+0x4016): In function posix_tmpnam':<br />
./Modules/posixmodule.c:7346: warning: the use oftmpnam_r' is dangerous, better use mkstemp'
libpython2.7.a(posixmodule.o)(.text+0x3f76): In functionposix_tempnam':
./Modules/posixmodule.c:7301: warning: the use of tempnam' is dangerous, better usemkstemp'
./python: error while loading shared libraries: libssl.so.1.0.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
make: * [sharedmods] Error 127
The "no such file or directory" is being thrown looking for a file that does exist in the /home/[username]/openssl-src directory.
This answer doesn't EXACTLY answer my question, but I did find out what I needed to know so I will post it here. I had to change the location of the SSL files it was looking for to just /usr rather than /usr/local. RedHat by default has all the shared libraries in /usr/lib rather than /usr/local/lib, which is where it was looking by default.
Building OpenSSL to compile portable version of Python