Issue #21811: Anticipated fixes to 3.x and 2.7 for OS X 10.10 Yosemite.
diff --git a/Lib/_osx_support.py b/Lib/_osx_support.py
index b6eac5f..b07e75d 100644
--- a/Lib/_osx_support.py
+++ b/Lib/_osx_support.py
@@ -450,8 +450,16 @@
         # case and disallow installs.
         cflags = _config_vars.get(_INITPRE+'CFLAGS',
                                     _config_vars.get('CFLAGS', ''))
-        if ((macrelease + '.') >= '10.4.' and
-            '-arch' in cflags.strip()):
+        if macrelease:
+            try:
+                macrelease = tuple(int(i) for i in macrelease.split('.')[0:2])
+            except ValueError:
+                macrelease = (10, 0)
+        else:
+            # assume no universal support
+            macrelease = (10, 0)
+
+        if (macrelease >= (10, 4)) and '-arch' in cflags.strip():
             # The universal build will build fat binaries, but not on
             # systems before 10.4