Fails to open `libtk8.6.so` on Ubuntu 22.04 when bundled with PyInstaller

[johnthagen]

We have a PyInstaller binary that we are building that opens a tk.TopLevel dialog.

When the executable is launched on Ubuntu 22.04, at the line

import tkinter as tk

The follow exception is raised:

  File "PyInstaller/loader/pyimod02_importers.py", line 457, in exec_module
  File "tkinter/__init__.py", line 38, in <module>
ImportError: libtk8.6.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

On Ubuntu 24.04, it does work.

CC @geofft , perhaps related to

• Build libtcl, libtk, and _tkinter as shared objects, and remove Tix #676

Motivation

We'd like to make our binaries as portable as possible, and python-build-standalone has a low GLIBC requirement that helps with this.

Environment

• Python 3.13.6 (python-build-standalone)
• pyinstaller v6.15.0
• pyinstaller-hooks-contrib v2025.8
• Build environment: rockylinux:8 container
  • uv 0.8.8

[johnthagen]

If I switch from python-build-standalone to a python:3.13-bullseye system interpreter, then the executable works on both Ubuntu 22.04 and 24.04.

We'd prefer to the python-build-standalone, since it's the simplest way (in our experience) to get the latest Python releases that also have a very old minimum GLIBC requirement.

[geofft]

I think this is going to be fixed by #745. The builds there should work and if you're bored I'd appreciate knowing if they do, but I likely will not have time to fix the tests and release this week. (See also pyinstaller/pyinstaller#9204 (comment) and the rest of that issue)

[johnthagen]

@geofft I wanted to check back in on this. I saw PyInstaller 6.16.0 was released and included:

• Collect python's standard extensions into python3.x/lib-dynload pyinstaller/pyinstaller#9212
• Rework the search for python shared library pyinstaller/pyinstaller#9218
• Revise the anonymization of co_filename in collected code objects pyinstaller/pyinstaller#9226

I was curious if I should expect these fixes to fix the TK issue listed here, or if further python-build-standalone fixes are also required?

[johnthagen]

@geofft Wanted to report that I did some testing and built a binary using PyInstaller 6.16.0 with python-build-standalone, but I still got the same error when I tried to run it on Ubuntu 22.04.