> I thought that the distutils-is-frozen rule was only for Python 2.x
> and that they would be allowed for 3.x? Is this not true?
It is not.  The normal rule is that stable versions (like 2.7) get only bug fixes while new features go only to the development version (like 3.3 before it went into beta last Tuesday).  For distutils there is a special rule that prevents new features for all versions.  The only exceptions are side effects of changes in other parts of Python (for example __pycache__ directories in 3.2 or virtualenv in 3.3).

> Obviously making Python cross compile properly is a very desired feature (in this day and age
> I'd say cross-compilation for any major software is expected to be honest with you).
Well I for one am a unix user but not a C guy; I compile Python easily and don’t fully get the benefits of cross compilation.

distutils2 is the place to add such new features.  We wanted to release it in the standard library for 3.3 but it was not ready, so it should be in 3.4.