matplotlib error - no module named tkinter

Question

I tried to use the matplotlib package via Pycharm IDE on windows 10. when I run this code:

from matplotlib import pyplot

I get the followin

Answer 1

On Ubuntu, early 2018, there is no python3.6-tk on ubuntu's (xenial/16.04) normal distributions, so even if you have earlier versions of python-tk this won't work.

My solution was to use set everything up with python 3.5:

 sudo apt install python3.5-tk
 virtualenv --python=`which python3.5` python-env
 source python-env/bin/activate
 pip install -r requirements.txt

And now matplotlib can find tkinter.

EDIT:

I just needed 3.6 afterall, and the trick was to:

sudo apt install tk-dev

and then rebuild python3.6, after tk-dev, eg:

./configure
make
make install