Distributing Panda3D Applications

Starting with Panda3D 1.10.0, Python applications using Panda3D can be packaged in a distributable form (e.g., zip archives, Windows installers, tarballs) using Setuptools. These packages can then be hosted on a website or store front for distribution to end users.

The new Setuptools-based process is a replacement for the old distribution method, which was more complex to use and maintain, required special builds of Panda3D, and did not work with Python 3.

From the Setuptools documentation, “Setuptools is a fully-featured, actively-maintained, and stable library designed to facilitate packaging Python projects.” The Setuptools documentation should be referred to for more details, but the basics of using Setuptools is:

  1. Create a setup.py

  2. Execute commands with python setup.py command

The basic structure of a setup.py file is:

from setuptools import setup

setup(
    ...
)

With the setup() function taking many arguments. See the Setuptools Examples page for example setup.py files for common project structures.

The panda3d package adds two new commands to Setuptools:

build_apps: build binaries that can be run without Python or Panda3D pre-installed on the end-user’s system

bdist_apps: package binaries into various archives and installers for distribution (also runs build_apps)

Thus, the basic steps to deploy a Panda3D application (or set of applications) are:

  1. Create a setup.py file for your application

  2. Execute python setup.py bdist_apps

  3. Copy the archives/packages (e.g., zip, tar.gz, exe) from the build directory to a location that users can access

Refer to the Asteroids sample program for an example of a setup.py file that can be used with Panda3D.