tkinter problem

[Paul Simon]

"David Smith" <dns4 at cornell.edu> wrote in message 
news:h35f78$pts$1 at ruby.cit.cornell.edu...
> Paul Simon wrote:
>> "Peter Otten" <__peter__ at web.de> wrote in message
>> news:h3481q$d95$00$1 at news.t-online.com...
>>> Paul Simon wrote:
>>>
>>>> "Chris Rebert" <clp2 at rebertia.com> wrote in message
>>>> news:mailman.2863.1247095339.8015.python-list at python.org...
>>>> On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 4:18 PM, Paul Simon<psimon at sonic.net> wrote:
>>>>> I have the "tkinter" problem and need some assistance to straighten it
>>>>> out.
>>>>> >From the web page "http://wiki.python.org/moin/TkInter" I tested as 
>>>>> >in
>>>>>> "step
>>>>> 1" and cannot import "_tkinter." I do not have that file on my 
>>>>> computer,
>>>>> but
>>>>> do have tkinter.py in /usr/local/lib/python2.6/lib-tk. as well as the
>>>>> directories /usr/lib/tk8.5 and /usr/lib/tcl8.5.
>>>>> This python stuff is great, but the documentation frequently
>>>>> feels like it is just a bit out of my grasp. I realize that all of 
>>>>> this
>>>>> is free but I understand the instructions on the web page to repair 
>>>>> only
>>>>> to the
>>>>> point of confusion. I'm not an expert. How do I modify my python
>>>>> configuration? Is there a file that needs to be edited? Which setup.py
>>>>> file
>>>>> do I use? Make? or python setup.py build and python setup.py install?
>>>>> Thanks. I appreciate your help.
>>>> - How did you install Python?
>>>> - What Linux distro are you using?
>>>>
>>>> Cheers,
>>>> Chris
>>>> http://blog.rebertia.com
>>>> I"m using Mandriva 2008.1.  I have to tell you honestly that I'm not 
>>>> sure
>>>> exactly how I installed Python.  Originally I had installed 2.5 from 
>>>> RPM
>>>> but 2.6 was not available for my distro (2008.1) in RPM.  I downloaded
>>>> something from python.org and installed.  Not sure if it was tarball or
>>>> zip file.
>>> Zip or tar doesn't matter, you are installing "from source".
>>>
>>> Python has to find the necessary include files for tcl/tk. These are in
>>> separate packages that you have to install before you invoke Python's
>>> configure script.
>>>
>>> I don't know what they are called on your system -- look for tk-dev.rpm,
>>> tcl-dev.rpm or similar.
>>>
>>> You may run into the same problem with other modules like readline.
>>>
>>> Peter
>>>
>>
>> Thank you Peter.  I understand what you are saying but don't know how to 
>> do
>> it.  Although I installed from source, I followed a "cookbook" recipe.
>> Could you tell me what files to execute, where they might be, and file
>> arguments?  I'm just ignorant, not stupid. ;-).
>>
>> Paul
>>
>>
>
> Just install the tkinter package from the Mandriva Linux Control
> Center's Software Management system.  I just did it, doing a search for
> tkinter brought it right up.  All done.
>
> --David

Thanks to all for your patient help.  I have made some progress, but still 
no success.  I installed Active Tcl-8.5.7 and corrected the PATH 
accordingly.  However I still get a "missing" message on building Python. 
"Failed to find the necessary bits (!) to build these modules:

....
_tkinter (among others)
To find the necessary bits, look in setup.py in detect_modules() for teh 
module's name."

Not sure what bits are, euphemism?  but am about to wipe the disk and 
reinstall linux, etc.

Paul