py*-tkinter 3.6.9 is not compatible with virtualenvs

[paulray (Paul Ray)]

The preferred way to use virtualenvs is without the --system-site-packages so that the virtualenv is encapsulated and installs its own stuff. However, if your python code uses tkinter there is a problem. The base ports pythonXX do not install tkinter, it is installed by pyXX-tkinter. Unfortunately, this puts _tkinter*.so into the site-packages directory, instead of in the main python library directory. Most python installs include tkinter natively and do not require site-packages to see it, so this means you can't use tkinter without having site-packags in your path (e.g. in a virtualenv). This would not really be a problem if tkinter were installable by pip, since it could just be installed in the virtualenv. So, I'd like to see one of two solutions implemented:

• Make pythonXX port install tkinter as part of the base python
• Or, make pyXX-tkinter create the _tkinter*.so (or a soft link to it) in the normal python directory, so that site-packages is not required for tkinter to work.

I'm guessing that the reason that tkinter is a separate port from python itself is related to the possible variants for tk (x11, quartz) and/or so that python itself does not have a direct tk dependency.

(Note that I hacked a solution to this problem on my system using this command: % sudo ln -s /opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.6/lib/python3.6/site-packages/_tkinter.cpython-36m-darwin.so /opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.6/lib/python3.6/_tkinter.cpython-36m-darwin.so Obviously this is not an optimal solution! But if this were done by port install py36-tkinter all would be good.)

[mf2k (Frank Schima)]

In the future, please add the port maintainer(s) to Cc (port info --maintainers python36 py36-tkinter), if any.

[paulray (Paul Ray)]

Replying to mf2k:

In the future, please add the port maintainer(s) to Cc (port info --maintainers python36 py36-tkinter), if any.

Oops, sorry. Thanks for fixing that!

[paulray (Paul Ray)]

Is anyone considering fixing this? I keep running into this issue.

[rieder (Steven Rieder)]

This is still an issue as of today. (edit: and with more recent python ports, including py310-tkinter)

[jmroot (Joshua Root)]

In 03fd9ff75107ebb4d664b0d51fbb40d00a5c8be5/macports-ports (master):

python310: update to 3.10.8

Build gdbm and tkinter extensions with PEP517, and install them to
lib-dynload.

Fixes: #59147