> I've never done a maintenance branch backport, but here is my attempt:
[...]

Yes, that sounds about right.  But after all that, you'll still need to modify the patch somewhat, since the requirements are different for 2.6:  floats should give a DeprecationWarning rather than a TypeError.  I think that's a straightforward change for Python/bltinmodule.c.  The trickier bit is coming up with tests that work properly---i.e., check that the appropriate warnings are produced, *and* that the the appropriate values are returned.  Look into the 'catch_warnings' function in the warnings module; (there's also 'check_warnings' in test_support, but I think that doesn't exist in 2.6).

'make patchcheck' only checks Python files and ReST files, as far as I can tell.

[I got your off-tracker emails;  will respond anon.]