There has been some recent discussion of the tile option in comp.lang.perl.tk. Basically, it is not reliable in Perl/Tk based on Tk 8.4 , it dosn't work for me here either. Tile is supposed to be in Tk8.5 and hopefully the next Perl/Tk release ( if there is one :-( ).

In the meantime, you can hack around it

#!/usr/bin/perl
########################################
### How to fake a background tile    ###
### using the place geometry manager ###
########################################
use warnings;
use Tk;
use strict;

my $mw=tkinit;
$mw->geometry('500x430');
#my $file = './zen16.gif';
my $file=Tk->findINC('demos/images/earthris.gif');
my $image = $mw->Photo(-file=>$file);
my $w = $image->width;
my $h = $image->height;

for (my $i=0; $i<$mw->screenwidth; $i+=$w) {
  for (my $j=0; $j<$mw->screenheight; $j+=$h){
    $mw->Label(-image=>$image)->place(-x=>$i, -y=>$j);
  }
}

$mw->Button(-text=>"Pack your")->pack;
$mw->Button(-text=>"widgets")->pack;
$mw->Button(-text=>"like normal !")->pack;
MainLoop;
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