diff --git a/Makefile.in b/Makefile.in
index 0a704db..526fa9c 100644
--- a/Makefile.in
+++ b/Makefile.in
@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ clean:
 	rm %DESTDIR%/resources/libraries/%pyhelper%
 
 %DESTDIR%/resources/libraries/%pyhelper%: pyhelper.c
-	%CC% pyhelper.c -Wall -I"%INCLUDEPY%" -L"%LIBPLPY%" -l%LIBRARYPY% -shared -o %DESTDIR%/resources/libraries/%pyhelper% %CCSHARED% -g
+	%CC% pyhelper.c %cflags% %ldflags% -shared -fPIC -o %DESTDIR%/resources/libraries/%pyhelper%
 
 test: all
 	prove -e 'perl6 -Ilib' t
diff --git a/configure.pl6 b/configure.pl6
index c52c5ec..05cac6f 100755
--- a/configure.pl6
+++ b/configure.pl6
@@ -2,20 +2,15 @@
 use v6;
 use LibraryMake;
 
-sub get_config_var(Str $name) {
-    return chomp(qqx/python -c "import distutils.sysconfig; print(distutils.sysconfig.get_config_var('$name'));"/);
-}
-
 my %vars = get-vars('.');
-%vars<INCLUDEPY> = get_config_var('INCLUDEPY');
-my $library = get_config_var('LIBRARY');
-$library ~~ s/\.a$//;
-$library ~~ s/^lib//;
-%vars<LIBRARYPY> = $library;
-%vars<LIBPLPY> = get_config_var('LIBPL');
+
 %vars<pyhelper> = $*VM.platform-library-name('pyhelper'.IO);
+%vars<cflags> = chomp qx/python-config --cflags/;
+%vars<ldflags> = chomp qx/python-config --ldflags/;
+
 mkdir 'resources' unless 'resources'.IO.e;
 mkdir 'resources/libraries' unless 'resources/libraries'.IO.e;
+
 process-makefile('.', %vars);
 shell(%vars<MAKE>);