I can confirm that it's an issue with Tk 8.5 built on macOS 10.14. This will most like *not* be fixed as 8.5 is pretty old nor do I have any desire to look into fixing it with a patch right now.

The original idea behind "make app" was that the vast majority of people building Pd should not need to build Tk, however it's fallen a bit behind.

What we can do is update the pre-compiled Wish.app that is included with Pd so "make app" produces the canonical Pd.app again. It's still using the old 8.4 Wish which no longer runs on macOS. Miller's release builds still work fine, so I've asked him to send a copy of his Wish.app we can use.

Another option you can use is to simply use a newer version of Tk, say 8.6.

On May 11, 2019, at 12:00 PM, pd-dev-request@lists.iem.at wrote:

I am having similar issue here.
On Wed, 1 May 2019 at 09:34, Dan Wilcox <danomatika@gmail.com> wrote:

64 bit is the default for compiling the Pd core. Your problem is that you
are using the old canonical 32-bit Tk Wish as provided with Pd which has
not been updated with Miller's 8.5.19 build yet (as far as I remember).

You need to build Tcl, TK, & Wish yourself and then use it to build
Pd.app. This is outlined in mac/README.txt

Your steps should be:

Build Pd

   ./autogen.sh
   ./configure
   ./make

So after I have done the above, then


Build Wish (and leave it around for reuse)

   mac/tcltk-wish.sh --leave 8.5.19


when I am trying to do this part, unfortunately towards the end, my
terminal prints out something like this
Installing Tk library files to
/Users/osamupang/pure-data/mac/tk8.5.19/macosx/../../build/tk/Deployment//Library/Frameworks/Tk.framework/Versions/8.5/Resources/Scripts/
Installing Ttk library files to
/Users/osamupang/pure-data/mac/tk8.5.19/macosx/../../build/tk/Deployment//Library/Frameworks/Tk.framework/Versions/8.5/Resources/Scripts/ttk/
Installing library image files to
/Users/osamupang/pure-data/mac/tk8.5.19/macosx/../../build/tk/Deployment//Library/Frameworks/Tk.framework/Versions/8.5/Resources/Scripts/images/
Installing message catalog files to
/Users/osamupang/pure-data/mac/tk8.5.19/macosx/../../build/tk/Deployment//Library/Frameworks/Tk.framework/Versions/8.5/Resources/Scripts/msgs/
ln: invalid option -- 'h'
Try 'ln --help' for more information.
make[2]: *** [install-tk] Error 1
make[1]: *** [tk] Error 2
make: *** [embedded-deploy] Error 2

edit: as I am writing this, I also find a work around to the above problem,
basically I did this to get into the homebrew environment:

brew sh
mac/tcltk-wish.sh --leave 8.5.19

(I am not sure other mac users are having the same problem as I do, but if
it is, it might be worth to add this work around to INSTALL.txt or
mac/README.txt ?)
however after the next steps

mac/osx-app.sh --wish Wish-8.5.19.app 0.49-1
open Pd-0.49-1.app/

I am having the same issue as Alexandre, where I can't put any object in Pd,
and when I am trying to resize the window, it just went dark and stopped
responding.

--------
Dan Wilcox
@danomatika
danomatika.com
robotcowboy.com