[Tkinter-discuss] Tkinter and Threads

[Douglas S. Blank]

Hi, I'm running some Tkinter code that works fine on some machines, but 
doesn't on others. The error I get is:

   ...
   File "/usr/lib/python2.3/lib-tk/Tkinter.py", line 2066, in create_oval
     return self._create('oval', args, kw)
   File "/usr/lib/python2.3/lib-tk/Tkinter.py", line 2049, in _create
     return getint(self.tk.call(
RuntimeError: main thread is not in main loop

This code works under Fedora Core 2, Python 2.3.3 with Tkinter 1.177, 
but doesn't under Debian, Python 2.3.4, with Tkinter 1.177. I see that 
the error is raised in _tkinter.c because the Tk interpreter is in a 
different thread from where I am attempting to run this code.

The questions: is this error dependent on whether Tkinter was compiled 
with or without threads? If so, is there a way I can, via Python, find 
out the method Tkinter was compiled? Is there a workaround for this 
problem (short of rewriting my code)? Will going to Python 2.4 alter 
this behavior?

The situation is that I create a canvas in a thread, and have another 
thread running that calls a callback that updates the canvas.

Thanks for any hints!

-Doug

-- 
Douglas S. Blank,         Assistant Professor
dblank at brynmawr.edu,            (610)526-6501
Bryn Mawr College,   Computer Science Program
101 North Merion Ave,       Park Science Bld.
Bryn Mawr, PA 19010  dangermouse.brynmawr.edu