Bpy as a python module

Before I ask my question: I realise that this has been answered for previous versions of Blender but, like many things, those answers are now severely outdated.

So, my question is this: Has anyone been able to compile blender 2.6+ as a python module? IE, compiled blender in such a way that an IDE such as Eclipse would recognise “import bpy” as valid. If anyone has any ideas about how to go about accessing blender functions from an external application It’d be much appreciated.

Thanks.

p.s. I have tried using Ideasman’s method but this does not seem to work any more.

Bump. I also am having trouble finding out how best to do this with modern Blender. Perhaps I am searching for the wrong things. Can anyone make any suggestions?

Or, I guess for clarification…I’m not sure as I need or want to go as far as the link the OP mentioned, which presumably permits, from an external Python IDE, one to actually write and run scripts that access the entire codebase.

I suppose I am more or less looking for a way to import the Blender modules into a Python IDE for access to its autocomplete and lesser things, not necessarily the ability to actually execute a script (although that would be nice…but I don’t have any experience with compiling Blender builds, let alone alternate builds like the above).

The next best alternative might be to run Blender headless using subprocess and pipe data back to the main program. Depending on your needs, this may or may not be viable.