Code Changes as per review comments by Antoine Pitrou.

Lib/test/test_xmlrpc.py

@@ -150,31 +150,18 @@ class XMLRPCTestCase(unittest.TestCase):
                            [('Authorization', 'Basic dXNlcg==')], {}))
 
     def test_ssl_presence(self):
-        #Check for ssl support
-        have_ssl = False
-        if hasattr(socket, 'ssl'):
-            have_ssl = True
-        else:
-            try:
-                import ssl
-            except:
-                pass
-            else:
-                have_ssl = True
         try:
-            xmlrpc.client.ServerProxy('https://localhost:9999').bad_function()
+            import ssl
         except:
-            exc = sys.exc_info()
-        if exc[0] == socket.error:
-            self.assertTrue(have_ssl,
-                            "No SSL support, but xmlrpclib reports supported.")
-        elif exc[0] == NotImplementedError and str(exc[1]) == \
-                 "your version of http.client doesn't support HTTPS":
-            self.assertFalse(have_ssl,
-                             "SSL supported, but xmlrpclib reports not.")
+            have_ssl = False
         else:
-            self.fail("Unable to determine status of SSL check.")
-
+            has_ssl = True
+        try:
+            xmlrpc.client.ServerProxy('https://localhost:9999').bad_function()
+        except NotImplementedError:
+            self.assertFalse(has_ssl, "xmlrpc client's error with SSL support")
+        except socket.error:
+            self.assertTrue(has_ssl)
 
 class HelperTestCase(unittest.TestCase):
     def test_escape(self):

Lib/xmlrpc/client.py

@@ -1330,7 +1330,7 @@ class SafeTransport(Transport):
         if self._connection and host == self._connection[0]:
             return self._connection[1]
 
-        if not hasattr(http.client, "ssl"):
+        if not hasattr(http.client, "HTTPSConnection"):
             raise NotImplementedError(
             "your version of http.client doesn't support HTTPS")
         # create a HTTPS connection object from a host descriptor