In commit 276d6e2439 ("Do not use the
chardet module in util.helper.decode_it") util.helper.decode_it was
changed to always decode the passed object if it has a decode method.
Since a python2 str has a decode method, the new code tries to utf-8
decode the passed str. As a result, a unicode object is returned (if
the decoding worked). Since a unicode object is not an instance of
type str, all subsequent isinstance(decoded_obj, str) checks evaluate
to False, which break some codepaths.
In order to fix this, restore the old python2 behavior (that is, if
the passed object is a str, it is not decode it). This change does not
affect the python3 codepaths.
Fixes: #814 ("osc log | fails")
d85030b72d