In case anyone else runs into this error:
gcc -pthread -c -fno-strict-aliasing -DNDEBUG -g -fwrapv -O3 -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -I. -IInclude -I./Include -DPy_BUILD_CORE -DSVNVERSION=\"`LC_ALL=C svnversion .`\" -o Modules/getbuildinfo.o ./Modules/getbuildinfo.c gcc: error: directory": No such file or directory make: *** [Modules/getbuildinfo.o] Error 1
What's happening here is that Python is using svnversion in it's build process but the 1.7 version has different output than previous versions. I ran into this problem with Python 2.5 but not with Python 2.4. I'm not sure about Python 2.6+ because I just downgraded subversion temporarily before I built the other versions of Python.