https://github.com/nedbat/coveragepy/blob/master/coverage/fullcoverage/encodings.py is a hack which makes sure that coverage.py is imported early enough to cover modules that are imported during interpreter startup. Previously it wasn't included with coverage.py, but @nedbat was nice enough to add fullcoverage to coverage.py in coveragepy/coveragepy@3962bc4 for its next release. So this issue is to make sure that no one forgets to take advantage of fullcoverage once it's available on PyPI.