If you need to install python-numpy on CentOS/RHEL 5.x against python 2.6, you may want to use my patched RPM.
If you’re running Yelp’s mrjob on CentOS/RHEL 5.5, then you probably found that you needed to install Python 2.6 parallel to the default Python 2.4 install. If you need to install python-numpy and want to use the python-numpy package available for CentOS/RHEL, you’ll of course find that it’s built against the default Python 2.4 install.
You can use the below source RPM to build numpy against your Python 2.6 install. First, you’ll want to edit the __python macro in /usr/lib/rpm/macros or ~/.rpmmacros to point to your Python 2.6 binary, and then run:
rpmbuild --rebuild python-numpy-1.0.1-2.rf.src.rpm
I’ve also made a source RPM available that upgrades numpy to 1.7.0.
python-numpy-1.0.1-2.rf.src.rpm
python-numpy-1.7.0-1.src.rpm