I have a virtualenv started with -no-site-packages , so that I can be absolutely sure nothing interferes with already installed stuff, and is 100% reproducible in any system. I tried the configure & make route for installing, but unfortunately swig isn't just a python package, so won't respect the virtualenv. So I either give up on being system-independent and use the brew method, or find out where to put what. I copied the content of the built "Lib" dir to "./swig_lib" , which seems to be one of the search paths, but apparently it doesn't work.