0

So I was working on a larger project and testing on a Mac when I noticed some weird behavior. I'm using Python 3.9.1 and macOS 11.0.1 – the bug doesn't occur on Windows 7, and I haven't tested other versions of macOS or Windows.

I'm using Tkinter for an initial setup window and then switching to Pygame, and in between, I do some cleanup of all the Tkinter variables – theoretically they don't matter, since I'm not using Tkinter for anything after that. Once the Pygame window opens, everything is fine, but if I click on another window to defocus Pygame, and then focus on the Pygame window again, it crashes with the following output:

pygame 2.0.0 (SDL 2.0.12, python 3.9.1)
Hello from the pygame community. https://www.pygame.org/contribute.html
called Tcl_FindHashEntry on deleted table
zsh: abort      python3 test.py

The minimum to consistently replicate this issue is

import pygame
import tkinter as tk
from time import sleep

root = tk.Tk()

try:
    root.mainloop()
except tk.TclError:
    pass

del root

pygame.init()
screen = pygame.display.set_mode((100, 100))

while True:
    for event in pygame.event.get():
        if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
            print('User quit.')
            exit()
    pygame.display.flip()
    sleep(0.025)

If I remove the del root then it doesn't crash, so it's not actually a big issue for my project – I don't need to remove the reference to root. But is there a better solution that can prevent the problem and still allow me to clean up the Tkinter references once I'm done with it?

Rabbid76
  • 202,892
  • 27
  • 131
  • 174
helpmeplease
  • 1
  • 1
  • I should add: if anyone has a more specific idea as to what the actual issue is, I may file a bug report. My first instinct is it's a problem either with Python's Tcl backend or garbage collection with Tcl objects, but the fact that it happens only by interacting with the Pygame window is confusing. – helpmeplease Dec 28 '20 at 06:34
  • What does `root.eval("info patchlevel")` report? – Donal Fellows Dec 28 '20 at 14:15
  • It reports 8.6.8 – helpmeplease Dec 28 '20 at 20:58

1 Answers1

0

Using _pygame and tkinter in the same application is not fully featured (see Embedding a Pygame window into a Tkinter or WxPython frame). It a bad idea to mix frameworks. The frameworks may interact poorly with each other or conflict completely. If it works on your (operating) system, that doesn't mean it will work on another (operating) system or with a different version of one of the frameworks. Mixing frameworks always means some kind of undefined behavior.

Rabbid76
  • 202,892
  • 27
  • 131
  • 174