No time for a full article here yet. But it is similar to the Python 2.5 on Centos 5 process.
In addition, libffi-devel-3.0.5-1.el5 and libffi-3.0.5-1.el5 from EPEL will be required to build Python2.6
In ~rpmbuild/SOURCES/ extracted the Python-2.6.tar.bz file and then changed ~rpmbuild/SOURCES/Python-2.6/configure.in
AC_PREREQ(2.63) to AC_PREREQ(2.59)
And then re-compress the directory into an archive.
tar -xvjf Python-2.6.tar.bz2 Python-2.6
DBLIBVER 4.7 to 4.3 similar to Python2.5
Other than that, it built on the first try. Haven't had a chance to test everything yet.
-Mike