On OS X, I wanted to build my own copy of Python that used my own copy
of Tkinter (built for X11). 

To do this, I passed "LDFLAGS=-rpath,/path/to/lib" to configure so that
Python could find my specific lib files, but I also had to edit Python's
setup.py so that detect_tkinter() would not do anything special for Darwin:

$ diff setup.py original_setup.py 
1199c1199
<         if 0 and (platform == 'darwin' and
---
>         if (platform == 'darwin' and


I did this based on a post by Ronald Oussoren to the Python-SIG Mac
mailing list [http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.python.apple/14008].
He also suggested that I file a bug report, asking for an argument to be
added to python's configure script to avoid having to edit setup.py.

Thanks

The problem is already fixed in svn. Can you download a svn checkout and
verify it that the code is working?

41848 skip.montanaro         if (platform == 'darwin' and

Crys: look closely at the diff, the "0 and " is in the modified file.

I apologize for the confusion: I put the modified file first and the
original second.

Sorry about that!

An option to do nothing special to find Tk and Tcl on darwin is what
would be useful.

Reopening since additional feedback was provided clarifying the request.

How does this request interact with the business about building the Mac
installer with a local tk installed?  Does the fact that that does
something useful mean that this request is in fact out of date?  Looking
at the setup.py comments, I suspect not.

Adding support for building an X11 version of Tkinter would require an 
explicit flag to configure, defaulting to a build that uses AquaTk (which 
most people would like to use).

I'm not interested in creating a patch for this, but am willing to review 
patches for this.