IDLE and Tkinter

[Randall Hopper]

tf at malcolmsmith.net:
 |IDLE and Tkinter
 |
 |I'd love to try IDLE, but am having a bit of trouble with Tkinter.  I
 |*tried* to follow the instructions on the site under "Tkinker
 |Troubleshooting". I can get to the "make install" stage, when I get this:
 |
 |/python: error in loading shared libraries
 |libtk8.3.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
 |make: *** [libinstall] Error 127
 |
 |Ok, I'm not editing something correctly... 

What flavor of UNIX are you on?

The short answer is that Python wasn't built with the path to one of its
shared libraries (libtk8.3.so).  The loader doesn't find this library in
its default search path, so it can't load python.

If you're on a UNIX that supports it (most do), a quick fix (hack) is to do
a:

   setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH /usr/local/lib

or wherever your libtk8.3.so lives.  (Note that if your shell is sh'ish
[ksh/bash/etc.] you'll use:  "export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib").
Then run python.  If it works, that's your problem.

The solution on most OSs is to compile in the path to libtk.  On other OSs,
you're responsible for adding that directory into the system ldconfig path.
Send us your OS and folks on the list can figure out which it is.

-- 
Randall Hopper
aa8vb at yahoo.com