Or, we could do it how makepanda ships the python scripts such as genpycode and packpanda. In directbase, theres “ppython.cxx” which is a C script that invokes python with the full path to the correct script (specified in #define’s.)
So, the path to the script relative from the panda root is hardcoded in the resulting executable.
Might be easier to just freeze them in the compile or install step, though.
While I see the benefits, this also has downsides. It’s a lot more pain to maintain than you think, and just releasing a new version is not as easy as just uploading a new package.
I did speak to one of the maintainers of the openSUSE repositories and we might just be able to get Panda in there - that’s easy to maintain since it’s so tightly connected to the openSUSE build service. If it finishes building something that happens to be in the openSUSE repository, it will automatically upload itself to there.