_cursesmodule.c provides a list of constants, prefixed with KEY_, corresponding to special keys (KEY_DOWN, KEY_LEFT, KEY_BACKSPACE, etc.). A portion of the function init_curses, which implements these, is #defined out on NetBSD (at line 2860 in Python 2.7). PyCurses_KeyName, which seems related (line 2111) is also not compiled on NetBSD. This is presumably because NetBSD's libcurses doesn't provide this functionality.
These functions work when _cursesmodule.c is linked to ncurses rather than BSD curses. Could the preprocessor directives be changed to omit these functions only if the platform is NetBSD AND ncurses is not being used?