Issue #1261 has been updated by Daniel Golle.
I could now it using a simple workaround:
At the first line (*before* require 'mkmf') of extconf.rb I put
DESTDIR="#{ENV['DESTDIR']}"
which makes rbconfig.rb accept it...
see http://makrotopia.org/ for the code
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http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/issues/show/1261
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