Before drawing any conclusions please take a close look to the actual error message:
```
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/tmp/ros_buildfarm/scripts/release/get_sources.py", line 34, in <module>
sys.exit(main())
File "/tmp/ros_buildfarm/scripts/release/get_sources.py", line 30, in main
args.os_name, args.os_code_name, args.source_dir)
File "/tmp/ros_buildfarm/ros_buildfarm/sourcedeb_job.py", line 52, in get_sources
pkg = parse_package(sources_dir)
File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/catkin_pkg/package.py", line 370, in parse_package
return parse_package_string(f.read(), filename, warnings=warnings)
File "/usr/lib/python3.4/encodings/ascii.py", line 26, in decode
return codecs.ascii_decode(input, self.errors)[0]
UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xc3 in position 183: ordinal not in range(128)
```
Decoding a non-ASCII character when then codec is set to `ascii` can't work. Since `!` is a valid ASCII character that can't be the reason. So it is likely the `é`.
What needs to change here? Well, the first important fact to note is that the sourcedeb jobs for the same package pass on all Ubuntu platforms. So obviously the buildfarm as well as catkin_pkg are able to handle this.
Why is it failing for this Debian job then? Debian has just recently been added and there must be something different. Looking at the console output again the following warnings just a few lines above should be enough:
```
perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
LANGUAGE = (unset),
LC_ALL = (unset),
LANG = "en_US.UTF-8"
are supported and installed on your system.
perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
LANGUAGE = (unset),
LC_ALL = (unset),
LANG = "en_US.UTF-8"
are supported and installed on your system.
perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
```
While the job tries to use UTF-8 it fails to do so on Debian and falls back to the standard locale "C". And with that locale it is simply impossible to decode the special character.
Cheers,
- Dirk