Why use a shell script in the first place? The shell script doesn't do everything the python script does (an example of this is that on OSX distutils and sysconfig can tweak the CFLAGS and LDFLAGS as needed based on the curent OSX version and the installed compiler, which is needed to be able to build extensions out of the box on all supported OSX releases) and doesn't work everywhere because it uses non-standard shell commands.

I'll provide a patch that ensures that the python version gets used on OSX, that will reduce the number of issues we get about this. 

Larry: python-config is shipped in the binary installers, and as it currently is doesn't work.  That's a problem because some software uses python-config to get the compiler options needed to use this python (for embedding, building extensions using a makefile, ...).  

I don't use python-config myself, but do try to keep the OSX version as closely as possible a normal unix install (another example of this: in a framework install, such as the binary installers, we ship a "libpython.a" at the expected location that is a symlink to the real *shared* library. That symlink isn't need for Python itself, but was added because some popular Linux software (can't remember which package) assumed that the library would be there).

Anyway, I'll push a patch for this when I'm home.  I'm slowly closing down my involvement with the EP sprints and will then head to the airport.