About os.getcwd(), another solution is merge_os_getcwd_getcwdu.patch:
os.getcwd() always return unicode string and raise an error on unicode
decode error. Wheras os.getcwd(bytes=True) always return bytes.
The old function os.getcwdu() is removed since os.getcwd() already
return unicode string.
Note: current version of os.getcwd() uses the wrong encoding to
conversion bytes to unicode: it uses PyUnicode_FromString() instead of
PyUnicode_Decode(..., Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding, "strict") (as does
getcwdu()).