Handle bytes and strings from RPM (#1764642)

[poncovka]

RPM can return bytes or strings, so let's use the function decode_bytes that
can handle both and always returns a string.

Based on: rhinstaller/anaconda@1c45e7b

Related: rhbz#1693766
Resolves: rhbz#1764642

[AdamWill]

I beat you ;)

#22

both of these would work, I think.

[AdamWill]

mind you, I think this one changes the behaviour in Python 2. It would leave the data as a str, whereas the current code decodes it to a unicode.

[AdamWill]

also this defines the function after using it, which looks wrong.

[M4rtinK]

mind you, I think this one changes the behaviour in Python 2. It would leave the data as a str, whereas the current code decodes it to a unicode.

We have dropped Python 3 support a while ago in python-meh, so this should not be an issue. Also I think this is more consistent with how we do this in Anaconda.

BTW, I think we should eventually require RPM >= 4.15 & drop all these hacks.

[AdamWill]

I just figured it's safer to handle all eventualities in case this gets backported to RHEL 7 or something like that.

[M4rtinK]

I just figured it's safer to handle all eventualities in case this gets backported to RHEL 7 or something like that.

Thanks for the consideration. :) In practices we have branches per RHEL major release and we manually adjust patches if they get backported from Fedora to RHEL (and in some rare cases in the opposite direction).

We could certainly try to have a single codebase that is compatible with all these environments, but we rather decided to have a clean & modern master branch without all the baggage needed for supporting multiple RHEL releases would entail, even at the cost of having to adjust patches as they flow between the branches.

This actually significantly helps when its time to get a new RHEL major release out of the door. :)

[M4rtinK]

Looks good to me & thanks! :)