Update tkinter to use Tk 8.6.15 or (better) Tk 9.0

[culler]

Feature or enhancement

Proposal:

This issue is being opened as a prerequisite for a PR which will update _tkinter.c and Lib/test/test_tkinter so that they work with both Tk 8.6.15 and Tk 9.0.

Both Tk 8.6.15 and Tk 9.0 currently have release candidates available and will be released soon. The TclTk project has decided that there will be no release of the 8.7 branches. Tcl 9 and Tk 9 are the current development branches (both named main in the fossil repository.)

Tk 9 offers many improvements over Tk 8, and both TclTk and Python would benefit from having tkinter support for Tk 9.0.

Has this already been discussed elsewhere?

No response given

Links to previous discussion of this feature:

No response

Linked PRs

• gh-124111: Update tkinter and test_tkinter to use either Tcl/Tk 8.6.15 or Tcl/Tk 9.0. #124112
• gh-124111: Update tkinter for compatibility with Tcl/Tk 9.0.0 #124156
• [3.13] gh-124111: Update tkinter for compatibility with Tcl/Tk 9.0.0 (GH-124156) #127364
• gh-124111: Fix TCL 9 threaded detection #128103
• gh-124111: Update macOS installer to use Tcl/Tk 8.6.16. #132190
• [3.13] gh-124111: Update macOS installer to use Tcl/Tk 8.6.16. (GH-132190) #132198
• [3.12] gh-124111: Update macOS installer to use Tcl/Tk 8.6.16. (GH-132190) #132199

[hugovk]

See also #104568.

[terryjreedy]

There are 2 items on that overview issue with individual issues. The first has a solution merged. The second was waiting to know whether there would be an 8.7. "The TclTk project has decided that there will be no release of the 8.7 branches." Do you have a link?

"Tk 9 offers many improvements over Tk 8," Is there a summary page? I am particularly curious if full unicode support was added. If so, I would want 9.0 to at least be an option with our installers, as the lack thereof is the biggest problem with tk for use with IDLE.

[culler]

"The TclTk project has decided that there will be no release of the 8.7 branches." Do you have a link?

Unfortunately, this decision was made by the Tcl Core Team (TCT) by consensus, not by our usual governance process which involves writing and voting on a TIP.
(I am a member of the TCT.) You can find a lot of discussion on the Tcl Core list and you can observe that the 8.6.15 and 9.0 versions of Tcl and Tk currently have release candidates, while Tcl and Tk 8.7 have never reached beta. (Maybe I should write such a TIP. I'll consider that.)

"Tk 9 offers many improvements over Tk 8," Is there a summary page?

The Tcl summary is here. Tk 9.0 was created as a continuation of Tk 8.7 (unlike Tcl 9.0, which has signficant differences from 8.7).

I am particularly curious if full unicode support was added. If so, I would want 9.0 to at least be an option with our installers, as the lack thereof is the biggest problem with tk for use with IDLE.

Yes, Tcl 9.0 has full unicode support. That was one of the biggest issues, of course. Switching to 9.0 means no more CESU-8. Moreover, if tkinter starts using Tk 9.0 then, as far as I can tell, that would mean that a majority of Tk users would be using Tk 9.0.

[serhiy-storchaka]

I think that this should be split on several parts.

• Update to Tcl/Tk 8.6.15 is a routine. It should be backported to 3.13 and 3.12. It is too late for 3.13.0, but it will be included in 3.13.1.
• Any test changes should be backported. This would help future bugfix backports and help to compare versions if we have a regression. Tests should be passed with older Tcl/Tk versions.
• As for automatically converting pixels to string, we usually don't do that except when wantobjects=0, in which case all values ​​are converted to strings. I think adding custom types for pixels and other Tk types might be more promising. After all, we may need to compare sizes, convert to different units, perform arithmetic operations.
• Even if we don't plan to officially support Tcl/Tk 9.0 in older versions of Python, we should backport these changes. We simply won't be making official releases with Tcl/Tk 9.0.

Tcl/Tk 9.0 is a good news, and I look forward to using it.

[aivarannamaa]

It should be backported to 3.13 and 3.12. It is too late for 3.13.0, but it will be included in 3.13.1.

Can it make into 3.12.7 ?

[serhiy-storchaka]

Can it make into 3.12.7 ?

I hope on this, but we still have not updated the bundled version on Windows to 8.6.14 (see #116145).