It, obviously, didn't help :(
Broken build: https://github.com/python/cpython/actions/runs/7882893355/job/21508865500?pr=115389

@sobolevn, See the Install Homebrew Dependencies section of the workflow log. Just installing ncurses from Homebrew isn't enough because Homebrew ncurses is keg-only:

For pkg-config to find ncurses you may need to set:
  export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="/usr/local/opt/ncurses/lib/pkgconfig"

And, of course, Homebrew uses different install paths for Intel Mac systems and Apple Silicon Mac systems so perhaps a better solution would be to adapt the GDBM_CFLAGS and GDBM_LIBS boilerplate from the devguide recipe.

We can continue to experiment here :)

perhaps a better solution would be to adapt the GDBM_CFLAGS and GDBM_LIBS boilerplate

You mean creating NCURSES_CFLAGS and NCURSES_LIBS?

perhaps a better solution would be to adapt the GDBM_CFLAGS and GDBM_LIBS boilerplate

You mean creating NCURSES_CFLAGS and NCURSES_LIBS?

That would be CURSES_CFLAGS and CURSES_LIBS.

$ ./configure --help| grep -i curses
  CURSES_CFLAGS
              C compiler flags for CURSES, overriding pkg-config
  CURSES_LIBS linker flags for CURSES, overriding pkg-config

perhaps a better solution would be to adapt the GDBM_CFLAGS and GDBM_LIBS boilerplate

You mean creating NCURSES_CFLAGS and NCURSES_LIBS?

That would be CURSES_CFLAGS and CURSES_LIBS.

$ ./configure --help| grep -i curses
  CURSES_CFLAGS
              C compiler flags for CURSES, overriding pkg-config
  CURSES_LIBS linker flags for CURSES, overriding pkg-config

Yeah, I meant adapting the devguide's GDBM_CFLAGS and GDBM_LIBS recipe for CURSES_FLAGS and CURSES_LIBS but, as it appears the root causes were actually a caching issue and using a newer Apple SDK on an older system, that we shouldn't need to use the Homebrew ncurses going forward so this can probably safely be closed.