tkinter.Tk() sometimes fails

[CharlesKnell]

Bug report

Bug description:

import PySimpleGUI

or

import FreeSimpleGUI

results in the following Traceback (for import PySimpleGUI):

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "c:\Users\charl\PYTHON\stackoverflow_questions_2\test_PySimpleGUI_re_tkinter.py", line 4, in <module>
    import PySimpleGUI
  File "C:\Users\charl\PYTHON\stackoverflow_questions_2\.venv313\Lib\site-packages\PySimpleGUI\__init__.py", line 1, in <module>
    from .PySimpleGUI import *
  File "C:\Users\charl\PYTHON\stackoverflow_questions_2\.venv313\Lib\site-packages\PySimpleGUI\PySimpleGUI.py", line 108, in <module>
    tclversion_detailed = tkinter.Tcl().eval('info patchlevel')
                          ~~~~~~~~~~~^^
  File "C:\Users\charl\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python313\Lib\tkinter\__init__.py", line 2572, in Tcl
    return Tk(screenName, baseName, className, useTk)
  File "C:\Users\charl\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python313\Lib\tkinter\__init__.py", line 2459, in __init__
    self.tk = _tkinter.create(screenName, baseName, className, interactive, wantobjects, useTk, sync, use)
              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
_tkinter.TclError: Can't find a usable init.tcl in the following directories: 
    C:/Users/charl/AppData/Local/Programs/Python/Python313/lib/tcl8.6 C:/Users/charl/PYTHON/stackoverflow_questions_2/.venv313/lib/tcl8.6 C:/Users/charl/PYTHON/stackoverflow_questions_2/lib/tcl8.6 C:/Users/charl/PYTHON/stackoverflow_questions_2/.venv313/library C:/Users/charl/PYTHON/stackoverflow_questions_2/library C:/Users/charl/PYTHON/stackoverflow_questions_2/tcl8.6.14/library C:/Users/charl/PYTHON/tcl8.6.14/library



This probably means that Tcl wasn't installed properly.

This does not occur using python 3.12.7

It can be worked around using the following code:

import os
os.environ['TCL_LIBRARY'] = r'C:\Users\charl\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python313\tcl\tcl8.6'
os.environ['TK_LIBRARY'] =  r'C:\Users\charl\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python313\tcl\tk8.6'

CPython versions tested on:

3.13

Operating systems tested on:

Windows

[Xiaokang2022]

I'm having a similar issue, only in Python 3.13.0 (Windows). But it doesn't seem like this problem will come up every time, it's weird.

At first, I thought it was something wrong with my environment, but now it seems that I'm not the only one who has encountered it. By the way, I ran into this issue when I was using pytest to test code related to tkinter.

[terryjreedy]

Closing as a duplicate of #118973 (tkinter fails in installed free-threading build) or, more likely here, #125235 (tkinter fails in venv). Fix for latter in 3.13.1.