TypeError: __name__ must be set to a string object

[Frank Millman]

Hi all

This problem is similar to one I posted recently regarding the 
multiprocessing module and unicode.

However, although this one manifests itself while using the multiprocessing 
module, is caused by Python itself (2.6.2).

At the top of my program I have 'from __future__ import unicode_literals'.

The relevant lines from my program read -
    from multiprocessing.managers import BaseManager
    class MyManager(BaseManager): pass
    MyManager.register('my_function', my_function)

Inside the multiprocessing module, the following lines are executed -
    @classmethod
    def register(cls, typeid, ...)
        [...]
        def temp(...):
            [...]
        temp.__name__ = typeid

At this point, Python raises the exception 'TypeError: __name__ must be set 
to a string object'.

I can fix it by changing my last line to -
    MyManager.register(str('my_function'), my_function)

Is there any reason why __name__ cannot be a unicode object in Python 2.x? 
If so, there is probably little chance of this being changed, so it is 
probably not worth reporting.

Any thoughts?

Frank Millman