Building Panda3D on Ubuntu 10.04 with Python 2.7

First, install Python 2.7 from sources ( follow the instructions here, or do the following... )

sudo apt-get -y install build-essential
sudo apt-get -y install libreadline5-dev libncursesw5-dev libssl-dev libsqlite3-dev tk-dev libgdbm-dev libc6-dev libbz2-dev
cd ~/Downloads/

wget http://python.org/ftp/python/2.7.2/Python-2.7.2.tgz
tar -xvf Python-2.7.2.tgz

cd Python-2.7.2/

./configure

make

sudo make altinstall

Now, install flex (I was missing this... you might be missing more stuff).
Let me know in the comments what else you needed and I will try to update this page.

sudo apt-get -y install flex


Get the sources for Panda3D from here... ( direct link to Panda3D SDK 1.7.2 source tar.gz)

cd ~/Downloads/

wget http://www.panda3d.org/download/panda3d-1.7.2/panda3d-1.7.2.tar.gz

tar -xvf panda3d-1.7.2.tar.gz

cd panda3d-1.7.2

python makepanda/makepanda.py --everything
sudo python makepanda/installpanda.py --prefix /usr/local
sudo ldconfig