[matplotlib-devel] Tk build problem on Ubuntu Hardy

[Fernando P. <fpe...@gm...>]

Hi all,

just a heads up: current MPL from SVN won't build the Tk backend on an
ubuntu hardy installation (32 bit) because the location of certain
paths seems to have changed.  I got it down to this snippet:

import Tkinter
tk = Tkinter.Tk()
tk.withdraw()
print tk.getvar('tcl_library')

On a gutsy box I get:
/usr/lib/tcl8.4

but hardy now reports:
/usr/share/tcltk/tcl8.4

This seems to foul up the path handling code in add_tk_flags(), so in
the end the created extension module object (in check_for_tk) ends up
with:

In [21]: module.include_dirs
Out[21]: ['/usr/share/include', '/usr/share/include']

This obviously means that the headers for Tk aren't found, since they
live in /usr/include:

/usr/include/tcl8.4/tk.h

The code for this path detection is obviously rather convoluted and
brittle, since there seems to be no clear API provided by Tk for this
information, unfortunately. This could be a Hardy bug, for all I know.
 I just wanted to let you guys know, for now I'll brute-force patch my
local copy so I can build.

Cheers,

f