It emerges fine, but right at the start it prints: /var/tmp/portage/dev-lang/python-2.6-r2/temp/environment: line 3412: default: command not found It's caused by the line in the ebuild that reads simply default; My portage is 2.2_r11 (had to be due to EAPI=2).
It's a portage bug but you can safely ignore it for the dev-lang/python-2.6-r2 ebuild since the default() function for the src_prepare phase isn't supposed to do anything anyway.
Created attachment 167768 [details, diff] fix default() function creation for src_prepare phase If this patch is saved as /tmp/default_src_prepare.patch then it can be applied as follows: patch /usr/lib/portage/bin/ebuild.sh /tmp/default_src_prepare.patch
This is fixed in 2.2_rc12.