Can anyone test it with 2.4.3 and report any bugs? I don't have access to any machines (even ones without GNOME) that sport python earlier than 2.5.

Sure we can just lower the configure requirement but then I can't guarantee it will work at all.

Ran hamster with python 2.4 and discovered that in some places we are using 
<action> if <condition> else <alternative action> 
form, that was introduced in python 2.5

Reformatted them to good old if-then-else.
The rest seems to work just fine (clicked through all windows). 

I'm no expert in the autotools chain, so could somebody lover dependency?

Also i think, the check_modules section could use an update - not sure if we are able to run on version 2.6 of the mentioned modules. 

So, are you sure we can change the config to 2.4?

If so, I can make the change. Or doing yourself. It should be enough to change this:
<patch>
Index: configure.ac
===================================================================
--- configure.ac	(revision 458)
+++ configure.ac	(working copy)
@@ -39,7 +39,7 @@
 dnl ****************************************************************************
 dnl * Python
 dnl ****************************************************************************
-AM_PATH_PYTHON(2.5)
+AM_PATH_PYTHON(2.4)
 AM_CHECK_PYTHON_HEADERS(,[AC_MSG_ERROR(could not find Python headers)])
 
 dnl ****************************************************************************
</patch>

About the check_modules section I think you are right, we probably should check the versions and update them.
I'll try to check them later.

I hope that this directive doesn't mean that it will always pick python 2.4?
If it will use python 2.5 when available, then please go ahead, do the commit and resolve this as fixed, Juanje!

I did the change and test it.

If you have python headers for 2.5 version, it takes it because autotools always will take the higher version, but the minimum version is setting as python 2.4.