The generally-accepted wisdom for Python development on OSX is to leave the standard system Python alone for the most part, instead using the Python.org Python (or whatever favored install you use). Thus, I have Python 2.6 installed and do all of my game development with that. Now that I’m checking out Panda3D, I’d like to be able to use that same version of Python, but I can’t find any way to tell the Panda3D installer to use that Python instead of the system Python.
Will I have to build Panda3D from source to get it to use my Python? There’s a rather daunting list of dependencies. I’d really rather not deal with that if I don’t have to…
EDIT: to clarify, when I try to run the example programs with anything other than “ppython” (which is a symlink to Python 2.5) I get the error “ImportError: No module named direct.directbase.DirectStart”. So presumably Panda3D installed some necessary library modules into the Python 2.5 install (in this specific case, looks like it was Twisted), which Python 2.6 of course cannot see. If I could get all of these into the 2.6 install then presumably Panda3D would work.
EDIT 2: thanks to |Craig| on IRC. Turns out all that needs to be done is to add /Developer/Panda3D/lib to $PYTHONPATH. Simple! Maybe the next poor newbie to encounter this problem will find this thread. 