Its removal has been scheduled for 3.16 in bfee2f7.
It doesn’t seem to have much usage looking through GitHub (the large number of search results is due to all of the forks of CPython and docs translations).
Mercurial uses it.
https://foss.heptapod.net/mercurial/mercurial-devel/-/blob/02ed53def57d9cd729d243744ce28a88e7280f53/mercurial/pycompat.py#L113
I suggested to them to use environment variables three years ago, but I got no response from them.
https://foss.heptapod.net/mercurial/mercurial-devel/-/work_items/6829
Can one of the core developers talk to the Mercurial developers?
I think removing may be a good push for them to actually fix it. I'm afraid I don't know any Mercurial people.
gh-149595: Remove the `sys._enablelegacywindowsfsencoding()` function (…
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methane commented on May 11, 2026
Mercurial uses it.
https://foss.heptapod.net/mercurial/mercurial-devel/-/blob/02ed53def57d9cd729d243744ce28a88e7280f53/mercurial/pycompat.py#L113
I suggested to them to use environment variables three years ago, but I got no response from them.
https://foss.heptapod.net/mercurial/mercurial-devel/-/work_items/6829
Can one of the core developers talk to the Mercurial developers?
StanFromIreland commented on May 11, 2026
I think removing may be a good push for them to actually fix it. I'm afraid I don't know any Mercurial people.
gh-149595: Remove the `sys._enablelegacywindowsfsencoding()` function (…