From now on, the line
from __future__ import unicode_literals
should be contained in every single Python file lest we run into any more 2.x/3.x issues.
Going forward, we're likely to develop on 3.x only and would likely miss subtle bugs otherwise.
We are at the point that testing takes waay too long for a release cycle, and fails way too often.
Tests through travis are a better indicator than testing just before release.