diff --git a/ChangeLog b/ChangeLog
index 6fce3058..13b47f50 100644
--- a/ChangeLog
+++ b/ChangeLog
@@ -12,6 +12,7 @@
 - read and write CMYKA tiff (thanks Doron)
 - performance improvements for morphology ops, esp. when zooming out
 - oop, im_render() was broken for mask == NULL
+- better support for multiple Python installs (thanks Jay)
 
 25/1/08 started 7.14.0
 - bump all version numbers for new stable
diff --git a/python/vipsCC/Makefile.am b/python/vipsCC/Makefile.am
index 679c9120..d02d02da 100644
--- a/python/vipsCC/Makefile.am
+++ b/python/vipsCC/Makefile.am
@@ -1,11 +1,13 @@
-INCLUDES = -I${top_srcdir}/include @VIPS_CFLAGS@ @VIPS_INCLUDES@ @PYTHON_INCLUDES@
+# Let make substitute the value of PYTHON_INCLUDES rather than auto*
+# # this makes it easier to support multiple python installs
+INCLUDES = -I${top_srcdir}/include @VIPS_CFLAGS@ @VIPS_INCLUDES@ $(PYTHON_INCLUDES)
 
 # we install to a directory inside the python area, since we are a module
 vipsccdir = $(pyexecdir)/vipsCC
 
 vipscc_PYTHON = VImage.py VDisplay.py VError.py VMask.py __init__.py
 
-# I tried making a suffix rule for this (and defining SUFFIXES) but I couldn;t
+# I tried making a suffix rule for this (and defining SUFFIXES) but I couldn't
 # get it to work, how annoying 
 # FIXME at some point
 #
@@ -24,6 +26,8 @@ vmaskmodule.cxx: VMask.i
 
 vipscc_LTLIBRARIES = vimagemodule.la vdisplaymodule.la verrormodule.la vmaskmodule.la
 
+# maybe there's a clever way to avoid repeating the link stuff 4 times
+# vimagemodule uses the C API as well, so it needs libvips too
 vimagemodule_la_LDFLAGS = -module -avoid-version 
 vimagemodule_la_LIBADD = ../../libsrcCC/libvipsCC.la ../../libsrc/libvips.la $(VIPS_LIBS)
 nodist_vimagemodule_la_SOURCES = vimagemodule.cxx