Compiling 1.9.4, rtdist: __path__ empty

Yeah, this is an issue in gcc. I think on the master branch this was eventually worked around in this commit:
github.com/panda3d/panda3d/comm … dc5adef324

However there is another copy of stb_image.h in direct/src/plugin which may also need to be patched.

Rather than applying the whole patch, the easiest way for you to fix it might be to look for the stbi__sse2_available function in both copies of stb_image.h, and removing its contents so that it only returns 1, eg.

static int stbi__sse2_available() {
  return 1;
}

and also changing this line:

#if defined(__GNUC__) && (defined(STBI__X86_TARGET) || defined(STBI__X64_TARGET)) && !defined(__SSE2__) && !defined(STBI_NO_SIMD)

…to instead read this:

#if defined(__GNUC__) && defined(STBI__X86_TARGET) && !defined(__SSE2__) && !defined(STBI_NO_SIMD)

As for compiler versions, for building Panda 1.10 we require at least clang 3 or gcc 4.8, though any version after that should work.