[Distutils] PEP 517 - specifying build system in pyproject.toml

[Thomas Kluyver]

On Sat, May 20, 2017, at 07:54 AM, Nick Coghlan wrote:
> * on platforms with 8-bit standard streams (e.g. Linux, Mac OS X),
> build systems SHOULD emit UTF-8 encoded output
> * on platforms with 16-bit standard streams (e.g. Windows), build
> systems SHOULD emit UTF-16-LE encoded output

I'm quite prepared to accept that I'm mistaken, but my understanding is
that *standard streams* are 8-bit on Windows as well. The 16-bit thing
that Python 3.6 does, as I understand it, is to bypass standard streams
when it detects that they're connected to a console, and use a Windows
API call to write text to the console directly as UTF-16.

If so, when stdout/stderr are pipes, which I assume is how pip captures
the output from build processes, there's no particular reason to send
UTF-16 data just because it's Windows.

Thomas