Yeah... don't know what I was doing with the -V to python. I think I was thinking of the old autogen that did a foo --version >/dev/null 2>&1, and since python doesn't support --version...
At any rate, cleaned up the rest of this
-include $(PP_TOP)/local.mak
PIDGIN_TREE_TOP?=$(PP_TOP)/../../..
GTK_TOP:=$(PIDGIN_TREE_TOP)/../win32-dev/gtk_2_0
DLL_ZIP_DIR:=$(PP_TOP)/win32-dist
PP_VERSION:=$(shellcat${PP_TOP}/VERSION)
PP_CONFIG_H:=$(PP_TOP)/pp_config.h
include $(PIDGIN_TREE_TOP)/libpurple/win32/global.mak