diff --git a/Misc/NEWS b/Misc/NEWS
index 8a63a22..c0f0d81 100644
--- a/Misc/NEWS
+++ b/Misc/NEWS
@@ -12,6 +12,9 @@
 Core and Builtins
 -----------------
 
+- Issue #8211: Save/restore CFLAGS around AC_PROG_CC in configure.in, compiler
+  optimizations are disabled when --with-pydebug is used.
+
 - Issue #8226: sys.setfilesystemencoding() raises a LookupError if the encoding
   is unknown
 
diff --git a/configure b/configure
index d9c35da..3f74610 100755
--- a/configure
+++ b/configure
@@ -2302,6 +2302,7 @@
    { (exit 1); exit 1; }; }
 fi
 
+save_CFLAGS=$CFLAGS
 ac_ext=c
 ac_cpp='$CPP $CPPFLAGS'
 ac_compile='$CC -c $CFLAGS $CPPFLAGS conftest.$ac_ext >&5'
@@ -3221,6 +3222,7 @@
 ac_link='$CC -o conftest$ac_exeext $CFLAGS $CPPFLAGS $LDFLAGS conftest.$ac_ext $LIBS >&5'
 ac_compiler_gnu=$ac_cv_c_compiler_gnu
 
+CFLAGS=$save_CFLAGS
 
 
 
diff --git a/configure.in b/configure.in
index 6893a07..0109367 100644
--- a/configure.in
+++ b/configure.in
@@ -441,7 +441,9 @@
 (it is also a good idea to do 'make clean' before compiling)])
 fi
 
+save_CFLAGS=$CFLAGS
 AC_PROG_CC
+CFLAGS=$save_CFLAGS
 
 AC_SUBST(CXX)
 AC_SUBST(MAINCC)