I tried to use Python 2.4.2 to create a bdist_rpm of
setuptools, whose version string was 0.6a9dev-r41475.
The distutils/command/bdist_rpm module's
_make_spec_file method mangled the version to
0.6a9dev_r41475 (line 370). Then when the spec file was
being built by rpmbuild, it looked for the sdist named
setuptools-0.6a9dev_r41475.tar.gz, which didn't exist:
it was called setuptools-0.6a9dev-r41475.tar.gz (note
dash). 

So you have to mangle the version to make rpm happy -
but you can't expect the sdist to have the mangled
version as part of its name.

I looked at the nightly Python source as of 17 Nov 2005
and saw that this bug still exists in the development
version of Python.

A patch is attached which fixed this bug for me.

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Sean, you seem to know a lot more about rpms than most of
us.  Any comment on this approach?

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This patch looks good to me.  I checked in python-trunk and
it still seems to need to be fixed.  I'd recommend it gets
checked in for the 2.6 release.  I'd like one of the
distutils people to confirm this though.

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Thanks for the patch. Committed as r52741 and r52742