[Pythonmac-SIG] Building 32-bit on Snow Leopard with tkinter/IDLE (was: Recommended Tcl/Tk with Py-2.6.x)

[Tom Loredo]

Ned-

No need to apologize; I realize the Python developers are
juggling many balls right now!

But I'll apologize---for always replying in a way that starts yet
another thread.  I reply to emails or web archive versions of
the posts, and as far as I can tell, there is no way to 
respond in a manner that continues a thread.  I've looked
for info on this, and from what I can tell it's a capability
that is being considered for *future* Mailman web interfaces.
If anyone knows of a way to accomplish this right now, please
let me know.

Regarding my setup.py hack to allow building 32-bit on 10.6
with Tcl/Tk 8.4:

> The last time I played with the 10.6 Tk 8.4, it worked just fine, so, 
> yeah, if you only need a 32-bit Tk on 10.6 that should be OK.

Just to clarify:  I think the situation is a little worse than some may
infer from this.  As I understand things, if you want to build Python 2.6
on 10.6 with a working Tkinter and IDLE, and without installing
a new Tcl/Tk, your only option is build a 32-bit Python that
links against Apple's Tcl/Tk 8.4, and this cannot be done with
the existing installer.  I just want other readers not to infer
from your comment that if you're happy with Python's default
64-bit build, all is fine.

If you are willing to install a new Tcl/Tk, you can have success but
you have to be careful.  Both ActiveTcl 8.4 and 8.5 (the current 
version) will produce a working IDLE.  Both of these are only 32-bit
in the free versions, so you will have to do some undocumented installation
trickery (in my earlier post) to build a 32-bit Python-2.6 on 10.6 to
mate with ActiveTcl, but at least you can avoid patching setup.py.

I've also found that the current Tcl/Tk Aqua "de-carbon" 8.5
commit at GitHub seems to work fine with Py-2.6.5rc1, both
32-bit *and* 64-bit (I built universal frameworks, so with one
install you can support either 32- or 64-bit Python).  64-bit Python's
"make test" will crash when it reaches test_tcl, but if you run the
test all alone, it passes, and IDLE works fine.  I don't understand
what regrtest.py does that affects the test when it's not run in isolation.

BTW, with Tcl/Tk de-carbon, I have finally built a 64-bit Python
with 64-bit numpy/scipy/matplotlib, with mpl's TkAgg front
end working fine for the examples I've tried so far.

I'm setting up a Homebrew fork to duplicate these installs;
if anyone is interested in it, drop me a line; it would be
great to have verification that it works elsewhere.

-Tom



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