instead of using the encoding returned by "locale.getencoding()", explicitly specify the used encoding. per the Debian policies, the debian/control, debian/changelog, and paths should be encoded in UTF-8. see - https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-controlfields.html - https://manpages.debian.org/testing/dpkg-dev/deb-changelog.5.en.html - https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-files.html#file-names Signed-off-by: Kefu Chai <kefu.chai@scylladb.com>