Hey Ross,

It is briefly explained:

- Sitecustomize was fixed since encoding was deprecated.

diff --git a/meta/recipes-devtools/python/python/sitecustomize.py b/meta/recipes-devtools/python/python/sitecustomize.py

index 273901898a0..4c8b5e2ba3d 100644
--- a/meta/recipes-devtools/python/python/sitecustomize.py
+++ b/meta/recipes-devtools/python/python/sitecustomize.py
@@ -27,19 +27,11 @@ def __enableReadlineSupport():
     except IOError:
         pass

-def __enableDefaultEncoding():
-    import sys
-    try:
-        sys.setdefaultencoding( "utf8" )
-    except LookupError:
-        pass
-
 import sys
 try:
     import rlcompleter, readline
 except ImportError:
     pass
 else:
-    __enableDefaultEncoding()
     __registerExitHandler()
     __enableReadlineSupport()

This change isn't explained in the commit log.

Ross