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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.