Now that Python 2.5 is here!!!
Any chance we will be seeing the next release of Panda soon?
Well, just from past experience, I wouldn’t bet on it any time soon.
Is there some feature in 2.5 you need now? You could always try to compile it yourself.
I haven’t seen Josh Yelon from Carnegie posting so much on the forums lately (read hardly at all) and David from Disney VR doesn’t do the Panda3d releases that we use so I wouldn’t hold my breath for an official release.
Steve
Its not that there is anything I specifically need, but keeping up-to-date is generally considered a good thing.
There will be new modules coming out from third-parties (ie PyODE, PyPIL, Pyro) that will probably support new features under 2.5 and it gets very confusing trying to juggle competing system versions.
That said, does your comment mean that you suspect that Panda is no longer supported? Back in April-May there appears to have been new versions of Panda every month. Why should I expect differently now?
Hi ta2025,
No, Panda3d definately is still being supported.
I was just offering my opinion based on the fact that Josh Yelon from Carnegie ETC who provides us the Panda3d builds has not been on the forums much so I’m not sure how much time he has to provide a new build.
David Rose from Disney and his group are still working on the C++ engine and updating it in CVS and that is available to anyone who has the knowledge to download, compile and use.
Steve
Let me also interject that, in our case, keeping too up-to-date can be a bad thing. We don’t want to force people to update to Python 2.5 before they’re ready.
From past experience, we want to wait until a particular version of Python has pretty much become the de facto version that everyone uses before we upgrade the standard Panda build to that version. Otherwise, some of the Panda users will have a hard time upgrading their own code to (or finding third-party libraries compatible with) the new Python version.
This is one of the curses of distributing a package that has to be bound to a particular version of Python. We could, of course, distribute a prebuilt version of Panda for each of the major current versions of Python, but that would be a maintenance nightmare. And poor Josh would never get any time to do his other academic work. 
As Steve points out, however, you are always free to download Panda and compile it yourself, for whichever version of Python you like.
The distribution pattern seems to be something like this: wait about 4 - 6 months, then make a new minor release (e. g. Panda3D version 1.3.0 would be the next minor release). While the bugs in the minor release are being discovered and fixed, make bugfix releases frequently (1.3.1, 1.3.2, etc.) until the release seems to be stable. Then wait another 4 - 6 months or so for the next minor release. Back in April-May, we were in the middle of release 1.2.x, so they were flying out pretty frequently. Now we’re in the middle of the wait period.
FWIW, I’ve heard from Josh that a new minor release may be in the works as we speak.
David
Thank you for clarifying!
Hello Guys,
I am currently working with IronPython and I was wondering how I could
get panda demos and other code running from the IronPython Interperter.
basically instead of --> ppython blah.py
i want to be able to start a panda script from IronPython
With regards,
Mez
I believe this question was answered in the other thread where you also posted it.
David
Hey David,
I did post but no answers yet, do you have any ideas? Everything I tried
didnt work.
thanks,
Mez
I know little about IronPython. I believe the answer posted in the other thread was along the lines of “gee, I don’t think you can do that,” and I’ll be inclined to agree.
You might post this question on the IronPython forums instead; they would have more experience in integrating a C++ library that was designed to integrate with traditional Python.
David
Hey David,
I have posted on a IronPython forum. i will update when I get updates. Thanks in advance.
-mez