bug#34236: scons does not run

[Luther Thompson]

scons refuses to run on my system. When I run it with or without a
SConscript file, I get this error message:

---BEGIN---
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File 
"/gnu/store/r7nxidk4r12wa3y7gipqx58gc3dx3vp2-scons-3.0.1/bin/.scons-real", line 
192, in <module>
    import SCons.Script
  File 
"/gnu/store/r7nxidk4r12wa3y7gipqx58gc3dx3vp2-scons-3.0.1/lib/scons-3.0.1/SCons/__init__.py",
 line 43, in <module>
    import SCons.compat
  File 
"/gnu/store/r7nxidk4r12wa3y7gipqx58gc3dx3vp2-scons-3.0.1/lib/scons-3.0.1/SCons/compat/__init__.py",
 line 105, in <module>
    rename_module('profile', 'cProfile')
  File 
"/gnu/store/r7nxidk4r12wa3y7gipqx58gc3dx3vp2-scons-3.0.1/lib/scons-3.0.1/SCons/compat/__init__.py",
 line 84, in rename_module
    sys.modules[new] = imp.load_module(old, *imp.find_module(old))
  File 
"/gnu/store/ibxxisi81v1v3y5xc3axl4x4rx6jpzw8-python-3.7.0/lib/python3.7/imp.py",
 line 235, in load_module
    return load_source(name, filename, file)
  File 
"/gnu/store/ibxxisi81v1v3y5xc3axl4x4rx6jpzw8-python-3.7.0/lib/python3.7/imp.py",
 line 172, in load_source
    module = _load(spec)
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 696, in _load
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 677, in _load_unlocked
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap_external>", line 724, in exec_module
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap_external>", line 838, in get_code
TypeError: a bytes-like object is required, not 'str'
---END---

I have a hunch that this is caused by a missing environment variable,
but I don't know where to go from there.

Luther