I am trying to install (through pyenv) Python-3.11.4 under CentOS-7. It installs but without GUI. I get the following error message:
Installing Python-3.11.4...
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
File "/.../pyenv/versions/3.11.4/lib/python3.11/tkinter/__init__.py", line 38, in <module>
import _tkinter # If this fails your Python may not be configured for Tk
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named '_tkinter'
WARNING: The Python tkinter extension was not compiled and GUI subsystem has been detected. Missing the Tk toolkit?
Installed Python-3.11.4 to /.../pyenv/versions/3.11.4
While Python-3.9.16 installs successfully on the same machine. According to Python 3.11 Build Changes, the requirement is to have "Tcl/Tk version 8.5.12 or newer" installed. I have
$ rpm -q tk tk-devel tcl tcl-devel
tk-8.5.13-6.el7.x86_64
tk-devel-8.5.13-6.el7.x86_64
tcl-8.5.13-8.el7.x86_64
tcl-devel-8.5.13-8.el7.x86_64
The same page says "Tcl/Tk, and uuid flags are detected by pkg-config (when available). tkinter now requires a pkg-config command to detect development settings for Tcl/Tk headers and libraries.", which is also installed:
$ rpm -q pkgconfig
pkgconfig-0.27.1-4.el7.x86_64
Could you please help me to understand what might be the reason of the failure to install _tkinter?
Thank you very much for your help!
To build successfully Python-3.11.4 under CentOS-7, one needs to set the following environment variables:
export CPPFLAGS="$(pkg-config --cflags openssl11) -I/usr/include"
export LDFLAGS="$(pkg-config --libs openssl11) -L/usr/lib64 -ltcl8.5 -ltk8.5"
where the openssl11 parts are needed for the _ssl module, and the rest is needed for the _tkinter module.
The pieces needed to build Python with the Tk/Tcl were found in
To check if tkinter was built successfully, do the following:
/path/to/python/3.11.4/bin/python3 -m tkinter
It seems, the root cause of the problem is that tcl and tk rpm packages in CentOS-7 do not provide the corresponding pkg-config files:
and so one has to provide the corresponding information manually.