I don't want to use Fedora 8. I would be very happy to use the newest version, but there is no choice. My problem is that 8 comes with python 2.5. I am trying to upgrade it to 2.6, but with no luck.
The only caveat is that I don't want to just install directly from source. I want to do it through the package manager using an rpm. I have tried building my own rpm from source using rpmbuild. I have tried using src rpms from newer versions of Fedora. I've tried these CentOS instructions. Nothing seems to actually result in an rpm file that installs successfully.
I have also tried extensive Google searching, and have been unsurprisingly unable to find any rpms that work, or working instructions to build my own rpm.
The basic problem you're running into is that RPMs made for newer distributions start to assume that other parts of the distribution are also up to date, and adapt newer not-backwards-compatible packaging conventions.
I think that if work is going to be so strict on requiring you to install packages from RPMs (which is a decent-enough normal policy), they should be reasonable about actually running a supported OS. For Fedora, that is Fedora 13 or Fedora 14, out tomorrow. Fedora 12 will be supported for one more month. Fedora 8 has been out of support for two years now.
If this rapid cycle can't work for you, they really need to standardize on CentOS or Ubuntu LTS.
Try rebuilding this source RPM on Fedora 8:
http://mirrors.kernel.org/fedora-epel/5/SRPMS/python26-2.6.5-5.el5.src.rpm
RHEL/CentOS 5 should be close enough to Fedora 8 that it should work. Another bonus of this RPM is that it should install in parallel to the system python so that the normal python utilities will still work.
I have to agree with mattdm though, you need to get off of Fedora 8 and onto something supported upstream ASAP. If you prefer RPMs CentOS is an obvious choice.