[Python-Dev] Low-Level Encoding Behavior on Python 3

[Antoine Pitrou]

Hi,

> We (me and Carl Meyer) did some experimentation with encoding behavior 
> on Python 3.  Carl did some hacking on getting virtualenv running on 
> Python 3 and it turned out that his version of virtualenv did not work 
> on Python 3 on my server either.  So none of the virtulenv installations 
> did though they all seemed to work for some people.
> 
> Looking closer the problem is that virtualenv was assuming that 
> 'open(filename).read()' works.

I may be mistaken, but you seem to conflate two things: encoding of
file names, and encoding of file contents. I guess that virtualenv
chokes on the file contents, but most of your argument seems related to
encoding of file names (aka "filesystem encoding").

In any case, it would be best for virtualenv to specify the encoding
explicitly. If it doesn't know what that should be, perhaps there's a
deeper problem ;)

Regards

Antoine.