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

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

See also #104568.

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.

"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.

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.

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 ?

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).

Hold off on updates to Tcl/Tk 9 until Python can be updated

Tcl/Tk 9.0 is available in 3.13 on windows?

No. AFAIK, tk9.0 is still in candidate stage, not officially released. In any case, not in main yet.

Terry, Tk 9.0 has been officially released and is the main branch of the Tk repository. It was released September 26. The Tk repository has a branch named core-9-0-0-rc containing the code used for the release, and the tarball is available in the usual place (https://www.tcl.tk/software/tcltk/download.html). However, PR #124156 has not been merged into cpython yet. - Marc

…

On Fri, Nov 8, 2024 at 6:52 PM Terry Jan Reedy ***@***.***> wrote: No. AFAIK, tk9.0 is still in candidate stage, not officially released. In any case, not in main yet. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#124111 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAJ6CP2RW266GA3VQAYNWGLZ7VMFLAVCNFSM6AAAAABOIEYSFWVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMZDINRVHE2TCMZZGA> . You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>

My comment was based on your posts of Sept 16 and early posts on the PR. Thank you for the update. What, then, is stopping 9.0 on main? I could not really tell from the PR. Like Serhiy, I am really looking forward to trying it out.

I don't think there is anything stopping it. PR #124156 is in the "awaiting merge" state.

One possible issue is that the Windows port of Tcl 9.0 puts libtommath in a separate DLL, which complicates the Python distribution. But there are build options available which will statically link libtommath into the Tcl DLL. So that issue seems to have a reasonable workaround.

gh-124111: Update tkinter for compatibility with Tcl/Tk 9.0.0 (GH-124156

[3.15] gh-124111: Update macOS installer to use Tcl/Tk 9.0.4. (GH-153868

pythongh-124111: Update macOS installer to use Tcl/Tk 9.0.4. (python#…

pythongh-124111: Update Windows builds to Tcl/Tk 9.0.4

gh-124111: Update Windows builds to Tcl/Tk 9.0.4 (GH-153901)

[3.15] gh-124111: Update Windows builds to Tcl/Tk 9.0.4 (GH-153990)

[3.14] gh-124111: Update Windows build to use Tcl/Tk 9.0.4 (GH-150102) (

With 3.14+ updated to 9.0.4 on macOS and Windows, this is now complete. Thanks to everyone who contributed!

With 3.14+ updated to 9.0.4 on macOS and Windows, this is now complete. Thanks to everyone who contributed!

I installed 3.14.6 on Windows. However I am still getting TK version 8.6.
The command I used to confirm this is as follows

python -c "import tkinter; print(tkinter.TkVersion);print('-----');import sys; print(sys.version); print(sys.executable)"
8.6
-----
3.14.6 (tags/v3.14.6:c63aec6, Jun 10 2026, 10:26:10) [MSC v.1944 64 bit (AMD64)]

With 3.14+ updated to 9.0.4 on macOS and Windows, this is now complete. Thanks to everyone who contributed!

I installed 3.14.6 on Windows. However I am still getting TK version 8.6. The command I used to confirm this is as follows
python -c "import tkinter; print(tkinter.TkVersion);print('-----');import sys; print(sys.version); print(sys.executable)"
8.6
-----
3.14.6 (tags/v3.14.6:c63aec6, Jun 10 2026, 10:26:10) [MSC v.1944 64 bit (AMD64)]

Most likely not yet published on the python website, the .6 was published on June 10th also looking at the tags .7 does not exist yet, might take a while

Python 3.14.7 will hopefully be released later today (5th August), after #153711 is fixed.

[3.14] pythongh-124111: Update Windows build to use Tcl/Tk 9.0.4 (pyt…

Python 3.14.7 will hopefully be released later today (5th August), after #153711 is fixed.

Thank you. I can confirm that Python 3.14.7 includes Tk 9.0.4 on Windows.
On MacOS, I confirmed that Python 3.14.6 includes Tk 9.0.4.

python3Packages.tkinter: build with tcl/tk 9.0 for python 3.14+

Navigation Menu

Repository navigation

Update tkinter to use Tk 8.6.15 or (better) Tk 9.0 #124111

Feature or enhancement

Proposal:

Has this already been discussed elsewhere?

Links to previous discussion of this feature:

Linked PRs

138 remaining items

Metadata

Assignees

Labels

Projects

Milestone

Relationships

Development

Update tkinter to use Tk 8.6.15 or (better) Tk 9.0 #124111

Description

Feature or enhancement

Proposal:

Has this already been discussed elsewhere?

Links to previous discussion of this feature:

Linked PRs

Activity

hugovk commented on Sep 15, 2024

terryjreedy commented on Sep 16, 2024

culler commented on Sep 16, 2024

serhiy-storchaka commented on Sep 27, 2024

aivarannamaa commented on Sep 27, 2024

serhiy-storchaka commented on Sep 27, 2024

ahmadkakarr commented on Nov 8, 2024

terryjreedy commented on Nov 9, 2024

culler commented on Nov 9, 2024

terryjreedy commented on Nov 9, 2024

culler commented on Nov 9, 2024

138 remaining items

zware commented on Aug 3, 2026

TheDemonGuard commented on Aug 5, 2026

maj113 commented on Aug 5, 2026

hugovk commented on Aug 5, 2026

TheDemonGuard commented on Aug 7, 2026

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

Labels

Projects

Milestone

Relationships

Development

Issue actions