"can't use a string pattern on a bytes-like object" on python 3.4

[habnabit]

Running pex on python 3.4 produces the following error, without further details:

pex: Unknown exception encountered: can't use a string pattern on a bytes-like object

Upon hitting C-c, pex emits the following traceback:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "ve/bin/pex", line 9, in <module>
    load_entry_point('pex==0.8.0-rc0', 'console_scripts', 'pex')()
  File "/home/vagrant/ve/lib/python3.4/site-packages/pex/bin/pex.py", line 308, in main
    pex_builder = build_pex(args, options)
  File "/home/vagrant/ve/lib/python3.4/site-packages/pex/bin/pex.py", line 279, in build_pex
    cache_ttl=options.cache_ttl)
  File "/home/vagrant/ve/lib/python3.4/site-packages/pex/resolver.py", line 215, in resolve
    existing=distribution_set.get(requirement.key))
  File "/home/vagrant/ve/lib/python3.4/site-packages/pex/resolver.py", line 101, in packages_from_requirement_cached
    return packages_from_requirement(iterator, requirement, *args, **kw)
  File "/home/vagrant/ve/lib/python3.4/site-packages/pex/resolver.py", line 69, in packages_from_requirement
    return [package for package in existing
  File "/home/vagrant/ve/lib/python3.4/site-packages/pex/resolver.py", line 69, in <listcomp>
    return [package for package in existing
  File "/home/vagrant/ve/lib/python3.4/site-packages/pex/iterator.py", line 57, in iter
    for package in self._sort(self._iter_unordered(req, follow_links)):
  File "/home/vagrant/ve/lib/python3.4/site-packages/pex/iterator.py", line 53, in _sort
    return sorted(package_list, key=key, reverse=True)
  File "/home/vagrant/ve/lib/python3.4/site-packages/pex/iterator.py", line 46, in _iter_unordered
    crawled_url_iterator = self._crawler.crawl(url_iterator, follow_links=follow_links)
  File "/home/vagrant/ve/lib/python3.4/site-packages/pex/crawler.py", line 132, in crawl
    queue.join()
  File "/home/vagrant/.local/lib/python3.4/queue.py", line 86, in join
    self.all_tasks_done.wait()
  File "/home/vagrant/.local/lib/python3.4/threading.py", line 290, in wait
    waiter.acquire()
KeyboardInterrupt

[habnabit]

fwiw this diff fixes it for me on python 3.4, but is probably wrong on python 2.x:

--- a/pex/crawler.py
+++ b/pex/crawler.py
@@ -71,7 +71,7 @@ class Crawler(object):
   @classmethod
   def crawl_remote(cls, context, link):
     try:
-      content = context.read(link)
+      content = context.read(link).decode()
     # except context.Error as e:
     except Exception as e:
       TRACER.log('Failed to read %s: %s' % (link.url, e), V=1)

[Yasumoto]

Hm.. could you catch the exception that py3 throws and then try the decode() then? That (in theory) would give us working py2 + py3, right?