On redhat, building an rpm is trivial. All you have to do is type
rpm -tb panda3d-1.0.4.tar.gz
That’s all. It does the rest. The RPM ends up in /usr/src/redhat/RPMS
I tried the same thing on mandrake, and it gave some error message that made it clear that the rpm-build tools are not installed. I spent a few hours trying to figure out how to get the rpm-build tools, but I failed.
So really, it’s a question of knowing where to get the right software.
Update: when you figure it out, tell me. I’d love to distribute a mandrake RPM.