Hi all
I am a professional programmer who just went through about two weeks of game/render engine reviewing to finally land here with Panda3d.
I wrote a blog article about my process here
blog.peoplesdns.com/archives/69
in hopes that I can bring in a few more people to appreciate this engine.
Anyway, I hope to be a productive member here.
Welcome! We really need more bloggers writing about the engine. The engine is great but relatively unknown.
Thanks for writing the article! I have a google alert on the word ‘Panda3D’, so I saw the article earlier today.
We’ve got a nice group of people on the forums here, I think you’ll enjoy hanging out with us.
also going to make new gentoo ebuild files for portage.
the version in gentoo is 1.0.5 and totally does not work… not even a bit…
right now messing around creating ebuids for 1.4.2 stable and the new 1.5.0
however, I am not a major ebuild maker (I mostly just use them to install general software and install special software manually, however in the case of the panda builds I think it might be very helpful to have a working gentoo ebuild)
forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-686480.html
is my thread on the gentoo forums.
if anyone here has an input on specifics for gentoo would be nice…
typically software like this in gentoo would be installed in /opt so p3d would be /opt/panda3d and the we set the lib dirs to /opt/panda3d/lib and add the bin dir to the path.
Might also be nice to have a setup script to handle some of the more mundane tasks involved in setting this up.
joeldg, sorry the panda3d world is full of ubuntu users 
. Any contributions to spread panda3d further will be welcome.
Here is a 1.4.2 STABLE ebuild (panda3d-1.4.2.ebuild) for gentoo that I am submitting to the gentoo maintainers …
1.5.0 release version forthcoming
here is the request at gentoo for 1.4.2:
bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=217064
and for 1.5.0
bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=217066
to use (in case you don’t know)
~# ebuild /usr/local/portage/media-libs/panda3d/panda3d-1.4.2.ebuild digest
If you name the following panda3d-1.4.2.ebuild in media-libs/panda3d and then copy it to panda3d-1.5.0.ebuild it should work the same.
# Copyright 1999-2007 Gentoo Foundation
# Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2
# 1.4.2 'stable' by joeldg - blog.peoplesdns.com
# $Header: $
inherit eutils python
DESCRIPTION="A 3D framework in C++ with python bindings"
HOMEPAGE="http://panda3d.org"
SRC_URI="http://panda3d.org/download/${P}/${P}.tar.gz"
LICENSE="Panda3D"
SLOT="0"
KEYWORDS="~x86"
IUSE="png jpeg tiff fmod nspr python ssl truetype doc zlib"
DEPEND="doc? ( dev-python/epydoc )
png? ( media-libs/libpng )
jpeg? ( media-libs/jpeg )
tiff? ( media-libs/tiff )
nspr? ( >=dev-libs/nspr-4.4.1-r2 )
fmod? ( =media-libs/fmod-3* )
ssl? ( dev-libs/openssl )
truetype? ( media-libs/freetype )
zlib? ( sys-libs/zlib )
python? ( dev-lang/python )"
pkg_setup() {
ewarn "Please note that python bindings are now"
ewarn "set by the python USE flag to coordinate"
ewarn "with upstream."
}
src_unpack()
{
unpack ${A}
}
src_compile()
{
#
# the everything keyword has checks for your current libs
# and will skip them if not available..
# this also adds support for maya and max models.
#
./makepanda/makepanda.py --everything || die "build failed"
}
src_install()
{
dodir /opt/panda3d
doenvd ${FILESDIR}/50panda3d
sed -i -e "s:lib:$(get_libdir):g" \
${D}/etc/env.d/50panda3d \
|| die "libdir patching failed"
if use doc; then
cp -R ${S}/samples ${S}/built
cp -R ${S}/direct/src ${S}/built/direct/src
cd ${S}/built
fi
if use python ; then
# python installation
python_version
dodir /usr/$(get_libdir)/python${PYVER}/site-packages
cat <<- EOF > ${D}/usr/$(get_libdir)/python${PYVER}/site-packages/panda3d.pth
# This document sets up paths for python to access the
# panda3d modules
/opt/panda3d/built
/opt/panda3d/built/$(get_libdir)
EOF
fi
cp -R ${S}/direct/src ${S}/built/direct/
cp -R ${S}/built/* ${D}/opt/panda3d
use python && touch ${D}/opt/panda3d/built/__init__.py
}
pkg_postinst()
{
elog "Panda3d is installed in /opt/panda3d"
elog
if use doc ; then
elog "Documentation is avaliable in /opt/panda3d/doc"
elog "Samples are avalaible in /opt/panda3d/samples"
fi
elog "For C++ compiling, include directory must be set:"
elog "g++ -I/opt/panda3d/include [other flags]"
if use python ; then
elog
elog "ppython is depricated and panda3d modules are"
elog "now installed as standard python modules."
fi
elog
elog "Tutorials avaliable at http://panda3d.org"
}also
joeldg@localhost ~ $ more /usr/portage/media-libs/panda3d/files/50panda3d
# /etc/env.d/50panda3d:
# $Header: /var/cvsroot/gentoo-x86/media-libs/panda3d/files/50panda3d,v 1.1 2005
/06/24 05:28:52 chriswhite Exp $
PATH="/opt/panda3d/bin"
ROOTPATH="/opt/panda3d/bin"
LDPATH="/opt/panda3d/lib"