[issue34313] Tkinter crashes with Tk-related error on macOS with ActiveTcl 8.6

[Terry J. Reedy]

Terry J. Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu> added the comment:

I installed 64-bit 3.7.2rc1 on my Macbook, with 8.6.9, and so far IDLE itself runs fine.  (Other than new blackout issue reported in #34313.)  I will let someone else test 32/64 bit release, which Ned says also uses 8.6.9.

Vlad says in msg323040 "on 8.6.8 I didn't see issues" and in msg326778 "The issues appear with ... Tk 8.6.[:8]".  Different 'issues'?

In any case, tcl/tk on the every changing macOS graphics seems 'tempermental'.

Let me revise, extend, and reword what I said earlier about 'recent releases'. I think the goal of the python x.y.z Mac equivalent of PCbuild should be to make it just as easy to build python with the current 'official' x.y.z version of tcl/tk as PCbuild does.  Does the ActiveState licensing allow this?  Then we could consider saying that we only support tkinter x.y.z with that tcl/tk, and IDLE patches could be tested against the expected tcl/tk they will be installed with.  (This is routine on Windows.  If someone breaks IDLE on Windows by replacing the installed tcl/tk, it is basically their problem.)

To put it another way, I want tcl/tk to shield me from differences between OS versions.  To do that on Mac, we have to use a fairly up-to-date version of the efforts of Kevin and company.

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<https://bugs.python.org/issue34313>
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