(The discussion for this bug started on the pythonmac-sig mailing list; see http://mail.python.org/pipermail/pythonmac-sig/2010-May/022362.html)

When I try to install Python as a framework:

./configure --enable-framework
make
make install

then Python gets installed under /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7, but it doesn't seem to function as a framework:

>>> import MacOS
>>> MacOS.WMAvailable()
False
>>> 

Python 2.6.5 returns True here. This is important for GUI extension modules; such modules do not interact correctly with the window manager if Python is not installed as a framework.

I see the same behavior with the current Python in trunk with Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5 both with Python installed from source and the precompiled python 2.7b2. Python revision 77030 seems to be the last revision without this problem. In revision 77031, posix_spawn() was introduced instead of execv() in pythonw.c to start the Python executable.