The commit creating methods "function", "select" were added the 24th february 2010, whereas gdb 7.1 was released around the 18th february 2010.
http://sourceware.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/src/gdb/python/py-frame.c?cvsroot=src

I guess that the author (Dave Malcolm?) of the is_evalframeex() method in Tools/gdb/libpython.py uses the HEAD version of GDB.

About the select() method, Dave added the following comment to its Frame wrapper:
---

    def select(self):
        '''If supported, select this frame and return True; return False if unsupported

        Not all builds have a gdb.Frame.select method; seems to be present on Fedora 12
        onwards, but absent on Ubuntu buildbot'''
---

gdb in Fedora 12 is based on 7.0.1 plus a lot of patches. But I don't see a patch added the select() method to the Python API:
http://cvs.fedoraproject.org/viewvc/rpms/gdb/F-12/