[Python-Dev] The Breaking of distutils and PyPI for Python 3000?

[Terry Reedy]

""Martin v. Löwis"" <martin at v.loewis.de> wrote in message 
news:47E2E02F.1020007 at v.loewis.de...
| This is probably not correct. However, in 2.6, you could write
| that as
|
| if type(s) is bytes: s = unicode(s, 'utf-8')
|
| as bytes is str in 2.6. If you want to support even older
| versions, do
|
| try:
|    bytes
| except NameError:
|    bytes = str
|
| somewhere, then write the code as I proposed above.

This is exactly the sort of thing that should be and I expect will be in 
the conversion docs.