Strange encoding problem in setup.py of biopython 1.71

[Andreas Tille <andreas@an3as.eu>]

Hi,

I imported BioPython version 1.71 into the packaging Git[1] and tried to
build it.  Unfortunately I'm stumbling upon some encoding problem in
(maybe?) setup.py:


...
dh_auto_clean
        pybuild --clean -i python{version} -p 2.7
I: pybuild base:217: python2.7 setup.py clean 
running clean
removing '/home/andreas/debian-maintain/salsa/med-team/build-area/python-biopython-1.71+dfsg/.pybuild/cpython2_2.7/build' (and everything under it)
'build/bdist.linux-x86_64' does not exist -- can't clean it
'build/scripts-2.7' does not exist -- can't clean it
        pybuild --clean -i python{version} -p 3.6
I: pybuild base:217: python3.6 setup.py clean 
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "setup.py", line 435, in <module>
    readme_rst = handle.read()
  File "/usr/lib/python3.6/encodings/ascii.py", line 26, in decode
    return codecs.ascii_decode(input, self.errors)[0]
UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xe2 in position 7116: ordinal not in range(128)
E: pybuild pybuild:336: clean: plugin distutils failed with: exit code=1: python3.6 setup.py clean 
dh_auto_clean: pybuild --clean -i python{version} -p 3.6 returned exit code 13
...


I admit I have no idea how to fix this.  Any idea?

Kind regards

        Andreas.


[1] https://salsa.debian.org/med-team/python-biopython

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