Something badly broken in python36?

[Kevin Oberman]

Today I tried to reinstall meson and it failed to configure with an error
that appears to be in py36-setuptools. But, when I attempted to reinstall
that port, I get a similar error message. I am stumped. I have reinstalled
python36, but that made no difference and python36 is the only listed
dependency of py36-setuptools.

I'm stumped and don't know python, so have no idea of how to deal with this.

I am running FreeBSD12-stable r342382 and have reinstalled all of my ports
after the upgrade. That all went fine, including py36-setuptools.
Here is the error I get:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "setup.py", line 11, in <module>
    import setuptools
  File
"/usr/ports/devel/py-setuptools/work-py36/setuptools-40.6.2/setuptools/__init__.py",
line 16, in <module>
    import setuptools.version
  File
"/usr/ports/devel/py-setuptools/work-py36/setuptools-40.6.2/setuptools/version.py",
line 1, in <module>
    import pkg_resources
  File
"/usr/ports/devel/py-setuptools/work-py36/setuptools-40.6.2/pkg_resources/__init__.py",
line 3126, in <module>
    @_call_aside
  File
"/usr/ports/devel/py-setuptools/work-py36/setuptools-40.6.2/pkg_resources/__init__.py",
line 3110, in _call_aside
    f(*args, **kwargs)
  File
"/usr/ports/devel/py-setuptools/work-py36/setuptools-40.6.2/pkg_resources/__init__.py",
line 3139, in _initialize_master_working_set
    working_set = WorkingSet._build_master()
  File
"/usr/ports/devel/py-setuptools/work-py36/setuptools-40.6.2/pkg_resources/__init__.py",
line 572, in _build_master
    ws = cls()
  File
"/usr/ports/devel/py-setuptools/work-py36/setuptools-40.6.2/pkg_resources/__init__.py",
line 565, in __init__
    self.add_entry(entry)
  File
"/usr/ports/devel/py-setuptools/work-py36/setuptools-40.6.2/pkg_resources/__init__.py",
line 621, in add_entry
    for dist in find_distributions(entry, True):
  File
"/usr/ports/devel/py-setuptools/work-py36/setuptools-40.6.2/pkg_resources/__init__.py",
line 1968, in find_on_path
    for dist in factory(fullpath):
  File
"/usr/ports/devel/py-setuptools/work-py36/setuptools-40.6.2/pkg_resources/__init__.py",
line 2038, in distributions_from_metadata
    root, entry, metadata, precedence=DEVELOP_DIST,
  File
"/usr/ports/devel/py-setuptools/work-py36/setuptools-40.6.2/pkg_resources/__init__.py",
line 2495, in from_location
    py_version=py_version, platform=platform, **kw
  File
"/usr/ports/devel/py-setuptools/work-py36/setuptools-40.6.2/pkg_resources/__init__.py",
line 2870, in _reload_version
    md_version = _version_from_file(self._get_metadata(self.PKG_INFO))
  File
"/usr/ports/devel/py-setuptools/work-py36/setuptools-40.6.2/pkg_resources/__init__.py",
line 2459, in _version_from_file
    line = next(iter(version_lines), '')
  File
"/usr/ports/devel/py-setuptools/work-py36/setuptools-40.6.2/pkg_resources/__init__.py",
line 2649, in _get_metadata
    for line in self.get_metadata_lines(name):
  File
"/usr/ports/devel/py-setuptools/work-py36/setuptools-40.6.2/pkg_resources/__init__.py",
line 1414, in get_metadata_lines
    return yield_lines(self.get_metadata(name))
  File
"/usr/ports/devel/py-setuptools/work-py36/setuptools-40.6.2/pkg_resources/__init__.py",
line 1411, in get_metadata
    return value.decode('utf-8') if six.PY3 else value
UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0xfa in position 0:
invalid start byte
*** Error code 1

Stop.

Any clies woillbe greatly appreciated!
--
Kevin Oberman, Part time kid herder and retired Network Engineer
E-mail: rkoberman at gmail.com
PGP Fingerprint: D03FB98AFA78E3B78C1694B318AB39EF1B055683