Letting python2 build with the default does regenerate cython bindings which then do get picked up by the python3 build. Smart :) I've updated https://github.com/bfroehle/debian-mpi4py
I still think we do not need to include the python-mpi binaries. From the install.rst file: Some MPI-1 implementations **do require** the actual command line arguments to be passed in :c:func:`MPI_Init()`. In this case, you will need to use a rebuilt, MPI-enabled, Python interpreter executable. *MPI for Python* has some support for alleviating you from this task. Check the instructions at :ref:`python-mpi` in the appendix. As far as I know OpenMPI, MPICH2, and LAM [the various MPI implementations included by mpi-default-dev] all support MPI-2 and hence this specialized python-mpi binary is not necessary. Nonetheless if we do want to include the python-mpi binaries I started a branch https://github.com/bfroehle/debian-mpi4py/compare/master...master-with-python-mpi -Brad