[Pythonmac-SIG] What did I just install? Where's Python?

[Skip Montanaro]

I'm trying to get access to the Carbon stuff, so instead of the usual

    ./configure
    make
    make install

I tried

    ./configure --enable-frameworks
    make
    make install

Make got all excited because it had lots of new stuff to build, and make
install got even more excited because it got to put lots of stuff in
/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework.  In fact, it got so excited I thought
it might wet its pants.  Fortunately it didn't, though the disk drive did
heat up enough to turn on the fan.  It complained about not being able to
install idle without _tkinter and walked off in a huff.

I then recalled I had asked about AquaTk awhile back and dredged up Tony
Lownds' response, and got that installed.  (Thanks, Tony.  Worked like a
charm.)  Now make install gets all the way through without complaining, but
it doesn't look like it actually installed a useful Python executable
anywhere.  I eventually found some (small) executables deep in /Library:

    % ls -l /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.3/bin
    total 40
    -rwxrwxr-x  1 skip  admin    280 Dec 13 11:21 idle
    -rwxrwxr-x  1 skip  admin     89 Dec 13 10:03 pydoc
    -rwxr-xr-x  2 skip  admin  16076 Dec 13 11:20 python
    -rwxr-xr-x  2 skip  admin  16076 Dec 13 11:20 python2.3

I tried executing .../python but it just displayed its usual interactive "hi
how are ya?"  message and exited.  I then tried .../idle.  It brought up a
shell, but wouldn't raise to the top of the stack.  When I clicked its title
bar it complained:

    SetFrontProcess failed,-606

This was from both a Terminal window and an xterm (I run XDarwin).  The only
way to get out seemed to be to ^Z and kill it.

If I drill down to Library/.../2.3/bin from the Finder, I see four
documents, none of which will launch and none of which have a 16-ton icon.
If I try to launch one of them I get an alert which says, 'There is no
default application specified to open the document "pydoc".'

So now I'm stumped and could use a push in the right direction.  Oh yeah,
I'm running 10.2.2 on a TiPowerbook.

Thx,

Skip