TKinter in a Virtualenv

Question

Trying to run python code with TKinter-based widgets from a virtualenv.

    user@computer:~/myproject$ env/bin/python Python
    2.7.3 (default, Sep 26 2012,         


        

Answer 1

I am using python2.7 with a virtualenv on a machine running linux mint. I received the exact same error as mentioned by the OP when running an application that required matplotlib in my virtualenv. "ImportError: No module named _tkinter, please install the python-tk package"

I ended up deleting and recreating my virtual environment using the suggestions in the above posts. Here are my steps:

1. if your virtual environment is activated, then run this command to freeze the requirements to a file that you can access later: pip freeze > requirements.txt
2. if your virtual environment is activated, then deactivate it using: deactivate
3. delete your virtualenv folder.
4. install python-tk using: sudo apt-get install python-tk
5. recreate your virtualenv using: virtualenv --system-site-packages
6. next, activate your virtualenv: source /bin/activate
7. restore all your packages that you froze earlier from the requirements.txt file: pip install -r

now, when I run the same code as before, it has no problem importing _tkinter. Hope this helps! Thanks to the everyone's suggestions above. It really helped me a lot.