The python-tkinter module requires _tkinter. A result from a websearch suggested that I needed to make sure tk (from meta-oe/meta-oe) and tcl were installed before compiling python.
I added a DEPENDS on the tk and tcl recipes to both python and python-tkinter in a python_2.7.3.bbappend. It did not work and was never built.
I'm looking for tips to figure out what is going on. Thanks.