Thanks David for your quick response, that cured that particular issue. Sorry for my slow response, my day job gets busy. :-/
I had tried to build 1.7.2 with makepanda and failed, and figured ppremake was a fair alternative, and while I was thinking about making things difficult, why not throw CVS into the mix? 
My ppremake build’s now breaking in ./direct…
make[1]: Entering directory `/home/steve/panda3d-src-20120110-2022/panda3d/direct/src/heapq'
g++ -ftemplate-depth-30 -c -o Opt3-Linux/p3heapq_heapq.o -I. -I/home/steve/panda3d-src-20120110-2022/panda3d/direct -I/usr/local/panda/20120110-2022/include -I/usr/local/panda/20120110-2022/include -I/usr/include/python2.6 -g -O2 -fPIC heapq.cxx
In file included from directbase.cxx:15:0:
directbase.h:22:23: fatal error: pandabase.h: No such file or directory…so I’ll give makepanda a try.
Steve