--- /dev/null
+Fixed regression in handling of ``LDFLAGS`` and ``CPPFLAGS`` options
+where :meth:`argparse.parse_known_args` could interpret an option as
+one of the built-in command line argument, for example ``-h`` for help.
if env_val:
parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
parser.add_argument(arg_name, dest="dirs", action="append")
+
+ # To prevent argparse from raising an exception about any
+ # options in env_val that it mistakes for known option, we
+ # strip out all double dashes and any dashes followed by a
+ # character that is not for the option we are dealing with.
+ #
+ # Please note that order of the regex is important! We must
+ # strip out double-dashes first so that we don't end up with
+ # substituting "--Long" to "-Long" and thus lead to "ong" being
+ # used for a library directory.
+ env_val = re.sub(r'(^|\s+)-(-|(?!%s))' % arg_name[1],
+ ' ', env_val)
options, _ = parser.parse_known_args(env_val.split())
if options.dirs:
for directory in reversed(options.dirs):