[Python-checkins] gh-91181: Add a What's New entry for dropping bytes support for `sys.path` (GH-94918)

[brettcannon]

https://github.com/python/cpython/commit/ec4745b5f2c2a460f12c97243c5b7d875f24b0c8
commit: ec4745b5f2c2a460f12c97243c5b7d875f24b0c8
branch: main
author: Brett Cannon <brett at python.org>
committer: brettcannon <brett at python.org>
date: 2022-07-16T19:14:40-07:00
summary:

gh-91181: Add a What's New entry for dropping bytes support for `sys.path` (GH-94918)

files:
M Doc/whatsnew/3.11.rst

diff --git a/Doc/whatsnew/3.11.rst b/Doc/whatsnew/3.11.rst
index f7274a8cea158..63afbbb7f18e0 100644
--- a/Doc/whatsnew/3.11.rst
+++ b/Doc/whatsnew/3.11.rst
@@ -383,6 +383,13 @@ Other Language Changes
   coerces negative zero to zero after rounding to the format precision.  See
   :pep:`682` for more details.  (Contributed by John Belmonte in :gh:`90153`.)
 
+* Bytes are no longer accepted on :attr:`sys.path`.  Support broke sometime
+  between Python 3.2 and 3.6 with no one noticing until after Python 3.10.0
+  was released. Bringing back support would also be problematic due to
+  interactions between :option:`-b` and :attr:`sys.path_importer_cache` when
+  there is a mixture of strings and bytes keys.
+  (Contributed by Thomas Grainger in :gh:`91181`.)
+
 Other CPython Implementation Changes
 ====================================