this fails on an Ubuntu installation, running the installed tests. confirmed by a coworker. Where does the 'invalid distro' come from?

======================================================================
FAIL: test_apropos_with_bad_package (test.test_pydoc.PydocImportTest)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/python3.3/test/test_pydoc.py", line 457, in test_apropos_with_bad_package
    result = run_pydoc('zqwykjv', '-k', PYTHONPATH=TESTFN)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.3/test/test_pydoc.py", line 219, in run_pydoc
    rc, out, err = assert_python_ok('-B', pydoc.__file__, *args, **env)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.3/test/script_helper.py", line 55, in assert_python_ok
    return _assert_python(True, *args, **env_vars)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.3/test/script_helper.py", line 47, in _assert_python
    "stderr follows:\n%s" % (rc, cmd_line, err.decode('ascii', 'ignore')))
AssertionError: Process return code is 2, cmd is: ['/usr/bin/python3.3dm', '-B', '/usr/lib/python3.3/pydoc.py', '-k', 'zqwykjv'], stderr follows:
invalid distro: 'Ubuntu'
Usage: pydoc.py [options]
A simple dialog based tool for basic configuration of Speech Dispatcher
and problem diagnostics.

pydoc.py: error: no such option: -k

======================================================================
FAIL: test_apropos_with_unreadable_dir (test.test_pydoc.PydocImportTest)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/python3.3/test/test_pydoc.py", line 467, in test_apropos_with_unreadable_dir
    result = run_pydoc('zqwykjv', '-k', PYTHONPATH=TESTFN)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.3/test/test_pydoc.py", line 219, in run_pydoc
    rc, out, err = assert_python_ok('-B', pydoc.__file__, *args, **env)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.3/test/script_helper.py", line 55, in assert_python_ok
    return _assert_python(True, *args, **env_vars)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.3/test/script_helper.py", line 47, in _assert_python
    "stderr follows:\n%s" % (rc, cmd_line, err.decode('ascii', 'ignore')))
AssertionError: Process return code is 2, cmd is: ['/usr/bin/python3.3dm', '-B', '/usr/lib/python3.3/pydoc.py', '-k', 'zqwykjv'], stderr follows:
invalid distro: 'Ubuntu'
Usage: pydoc.py [options]
A simple dialog based tool for basic configuration of Speech Dispatcher
and problem diagnostics.

pydoc.py: error: no such option: -k

======================================================================
FAIL: test_url_requests (test.test_pydoc.PydocUrlHandlerTest)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/python3.3/test/test_pydoc.py", line 560, in test_url_requests
    self.assertEqual(result, title)
AssertionError: 'Pydoc: Error - search?key=pydoc' != 'Pydoc: Search Results'
- Pydoc: Error - search?key=pydoc
+ Pydoc: Search Results

this can be avoided when running python with -S, the error comes from a package installed in site-packages.

There's an issue somewhere about allowing certain tests to be run in a tailored python environment (I'm pretty sure it involved test_site but I can't lay my hands on it).  It seems like test_pydoc would be another candidate for that capability.

Can our testing gurus shed any light on this?

This is caused by Brailcom's Speech Dispatcher, whose config script ran optparse on import. Apparently it was fixed in their version 0.8.6.

Some references:
https://github.com/brailcom/speechd/commit/1808ea1a6e840951ffde61e5a6476ccfc118ab5a
https://its.freebsoft.org/its/issues/29268
https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/40478
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=838665

Should we close this as third party or is there something we can do about it?