Questions about installing the Panda3d runtime on Ubuntu 18.04

Installation
1

Hi, I’m considering using Panda3d for a project that’s intended to be
run from a web page and ran into an immediate problem.

I’m running Ububtu 18.04, which was released on April 26th, 2018.
There wasn’t any stable SDK available for 18.04 so I installed
a development version
as suggested on the download page. Then I modified the “Bullet Hello World”
to test things I considered potential issues. It ran perfectly.

Then I needed to make a p3d file to see if I could make it run from a web page
If I’m reading the documentation correctly, it seems I have to install the
Panda3d runtime in order to make a p3d file. I followed the instructions
from the documentation in “Download Panda3D Runtime 1.0.4”

Ubuntu refused to to use panda3d
as a source until I added ‘[trusted=yes]’. With
deb [trusted=yes] http://archive.panda3d.org/ubuntu bionic main
in /etc/apt/sources.list, Ubuntu attempted to access Panda3d but
sudo apt-get update
returned the following error:
Err:10 archive.panda3d.org/ubuntu bionic/main amd64 Packages
404 Not Found [IP: 128.2.236.234 80]
and then
sudo apt-get install panda3d-runtime
failed with:
E: Unable to locate package panda3d-runtime

So I am stuck for the moment. But more importantly, how is anyone supposed
to run my (or anyone else’s) project if installing the runtime (aka the
necessary plugin) is difficult or impossible. The average Ubuntu user (I don’t know
how tedious the downloads are for the other operating systems) is not going to
be interested in adding to the Ubuntu repository, and may not get anywhere
if he/she does. In other words, its one thing to ask a user to click to install
a plugin and then continue; its quite another thing to ask them to leave the
broswer and start jumping through hoops - they will just move on to the next thing.

So my questions are:
1. How do I install the runtime so I can continue testing?
2. Are there plans to simplify downloading the Runtime so people
will not be dissuaded from trying a Panda3d project?

Thanks for your help

2

Sorry to hear about all the trouble with installing the runtime. In fact, due to major browsers having dropped support for native browser plug-ins recently, we are discontinuing the runtime at the end of this year, which is why it is no longer being maintained. There’s simply no point in continuing development on it when the major browsers will no longer run it.

The path forward for Panda3D in the browser is with the experimental WebGL port. The upcoming release of Panda3D will also have a new deployment system that no longer uses the Runtime in any form.

I admit we could be doing a better job at communicating this clearly. My apologies!

3

Thanks for your reply.

Do you have any idea of when the experimental WebGL port will
become part of Panda3d?

4

Sorry, I don’t know.

5

Oh well, better “i don’t know” than never.
I’ll check back in 2019…
Thanks

6

I have the same error, how to fix this?