Difference between "grid" and "pack" geometry managers

Question

What's the main difference between the Tkinter geometry managers grid and pack?

What do you use for your projects ?

If grid is better to align object, what the main purpose of pack?

Answer 1

grid is used to lay out widgets in a grid. Another answer says it "overlays a graph" which is a bit of a misnomer. It doesn't overlay anything, it merely arranges widgets along row and column boundaries. It is great for creating tables and other structured types of layouts.

pack lays things out along the sides of a box. It excels at doing layouts where everything is on a single row or in a single column (think rows of buttons in a toolbar or dialog box). It's also useful for very simple layouts such as a navigator on the left and a main work area on the right. It can be used to create very complex layouts but it gets tricky until you fully understand the packing algorithm.

You cannot use both grid and pack with widgets that have a common parent. Your app may work but it is much more likely to get into an infinite loop as each manager tries to layout the widgets, then the other notices the widgets change size and try to adjust, etc. etc.

The third manage is place. Place is great for doing either absolute positioning (ie: place widget at a given x/y) or relative (eg: place a widget on the right edge of some other widget).

While you cannot mix grid and pack within the same container (a container is typically a frame), you can use both grid and pack within a single application. This is very, very common since each has strengths and weaknesses. I use both on a regular basis.