I am trying to build Python3.12 from source as a non-root user. I am aware that it need openssl (for pip) and the libffi headers, which I have attempted to build from source as well. Doing this I end up with the following errors in the make log:

[ERROR] _ctypes failed to import: libffi.so.8: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
[ERROR] _hashlib failed to import: libcrypto.so.3: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
[ERROR] _ssl failed to import: libssl.so.3: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
The following modules are *disabled* in configure script:
_sqlite3                                                       

The necessary bits to build these optional modules were not found:
_curses               _curses_panel         _dbm               
_gdbm                 _lzma                 _tkinter           
nis                   readline                                 
To find the necessary bits, look in configure.ac and config.log.

Following modules built successfully but were removed because they could not be imported:
_ctypes               _hashlib              _ssl               

Could not build the ssl module!
Python requires a OpenSSL 1.1.1 or newer

Checked 111 modules (31 built-in, 67 shared, 1 n/a on linux-x86_64, 1 disabled, 8 missing, 3 failed on import)

I would like to be able to (among other) use the ctype module, so this is sub-optimal.

The steps I took

Step 1: build libffi from source. I followed [these][(https://github.com/libffi/libffi?tab=readme-ov-file#installing-libffi) instructions and included --prefix=$HOME/.local (since that is where I would like to install everything locally) when configuring the make file. (./configure --prefix=$HOME/.local).

Step 2: build openssl from source. I (more or less) followed these instructions. I again included --prefix=$HOME/.local during configuration.

By now, my .local folder looks something like this:

├── bin
│   ├── c_rehash
│   └── openssl
├── include
│   ├── ffi.h
│   ├── ffitarget.h
│   └── openssl
│       └── <loads of header files>.h
├── lib
│   ├── libcrypto.so
│   ├── libffi.so
│   ├── libssl.so
│   └── pkgconfig
│       └── libffi.pc
├── lib64
│   ├── cmake
│   │   └── OpenSSL
│   │       ├── OpenSSLConfig.cmake
│   │       └── OpenSSLConfigVersion.cmake
│   ├── engines-3
│   │   ├── afalg.so
│   │   ├── capi.so
│   │   ├── loader_attic.so
│   │   └── padlock.so
│   ├── libcrypto.a
│   ├── libcrypto.so
│   ├── libcrypto.so.3
│   ├── libffi.a
│   ├── libffi.la
│   ├── libffi.so
│   ├── libffi.so.8
│   ├── libffi.so.8.1.3
│   ├── libssl.a
│   ├── libssl.so
│   ├── libssl.so.3
│   ├── ossl-modules
│   │   └── legacy.so
│   └── pkgconfig
│       ├── libcrypto.pc
│       ├── libssl.pc
│       └── openssl.pc
├── share
│   ├── ...
...

Step 3: build Python3.12 from source. Here I also included the take-aways from this post and tried to include all the correct flag etc. My suspicion is that it goes wrong here.

To configure:

./configure --enable-optimizations --with-lto --with-openssl=$HOME/.local 
--prefix=$HOME/.local/ 
LIBFFI_INCLUDEDIR=$HOME/.local/include 
LDFLAGS="-L$HOME/.local/lib/../lib64 -L$HOME/.local/lib64" 
CFLAGS="-I$HOME/.local/include"

This resulted (after lots of tries) in some positive outputs for the checks to libiff and openssl files.

To build (for some reason repeating the include dir, see earlier link):

make LIBFFI_INCLUDEDIR=$HOME/.local/include

This executing of make then results in the errors

(Note: New here, not a Linux-wizard)