How to distribute a python Tkinter GUI from one Mac to another

*nix systems are absolutely insane about compatibility and dependencies. You'd think that one version of software from the next would be more or less compatible, but they aren't. In the Linux world, most of the package managers have a way for software to specify what its dependancies are. In Fedora, if I do "yum install package" it figures out what other software the new package depends on and asks if it can install those for you. I would expect that a .app would have a similar function, but how it works I don't know. Short of that, you have to just document what versions people have and make them install what is required.

Have you thought about using Cocoa if it's for macs?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PyObjC

You could use an application like http://s.sudre.free.fr/Software/Packages/about.html (easy, free, GUI) or Apple's http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11487596/making-os-x-installer-packages-like-a-pro-xcode4-developer-id-mountain-lion-re/11487658#11487658 (more difficult, also free, CLI) to bundle your scripts together with Tcl/Tk .framework files that match your version requirements. Your installer places the frameworks in a folder of your choice (e.g., in /Library/Frameworks or ~/Library/Frameworks) where your Python scripts are directed to import them.

If OSX ships with a version of Tcl/Tk/Tkinter you should develop with that one. And the best you can hope for is that if a machine has a newer version that the newer version has kept backwards compatibility with the older version. With the X.Y.Z http://semver.org/ you could hope that something built against X.Y.Z would work with X.Y.Z-1 or X.Y.Z+1 apart from any minor bugs you run into. In theory the API should stay the same across X.Y.*. If you're lucky a program built against X.Y.Z will work with X.Y+1.Z because X.Y+1 kept support for the older X.Y API. If you build against X.Y and try to run against X.Y-1, it will probably fail miserably. You may be able to build the GUI modules statically or somehow have your libraries packaged up with your app, but that sometimes leads to even more pain. Your Tcl/Tk/Tkinter build may need a certain version of some PNG or JPG or other library that is on your system and then that library will happen to be the one that the target system has a different version of. Does Python not have some sort of module dependency/packaging thing where you build your app and just have it declare that it needs the Tk modules and let the package manager install the appropriate Tk modules before installing your app? If you do it that way won't your app install the same on OSX/Windows/Linux without you having to worry about which versions of libraries are installed?

Definitely try to include any frameworks within your app bundle. You may also benefit from building your app on an older version of OS X—forwards compatibility tends to be a lot better than backwards. Feel free to add more details, or to memail me. I have quite a bit of experience building things on OS X, and wouldn't mind helping.

Thank you all for the advice - when I get a chance, I'll be looking into how to include the Tcl/Tk framework in the app bundle. If that doesn't work, I'll try using Packages. I'll report back. empath - Thanks for pointing out PyObjC. I didn't do a very good job keeping the backend and frontend separate in this project, so it would be a significant undertaking to pull out the Tkinter and replace it with Cocoa, but I should probably start with Cocoa for the next project. Thank you!