ProgrammingError exception raises when trying to insert/update data with
pysqlite 2.5.x backend. pysqlite 2.5.0 or higher version requires query
string as unicode.

Here's traceback:

  File
"/home/yasusii/Py/lib/python2.4/site-packages/roundup/backends/rdbms_common.py",
line 1485, in create_inner
    value)

  File
"/home/yasusii/Py/lib/python2.4/site-packages/roundup/backends/indexer_rdbms.py",
line 79, in add_text
    self.db.cursor.executemany(sql, words)

ProgrammingError: You must not use 8-bit bytestrings unless you use a
text_factory that can interpret 8-bit bytestrings (like text_factory
str). It is highly recommended that you instead just switch your
application to Unicode strings.

I wonder what could help me to decide if I can commit this
without doing a check with several sqlite python bindings
and see the effect for myself.

Did you test this with sqlite 3 sqlite 2 and pysqlite ?
Is there documentation mentioning this difference?

Looks like this change was checked in by:

changeset:   4240:289f249ba192
user:        Richard Jones <richard@users.sourceforge.net>
date:        Mon Aug 10 04:25:15 2009 +0000
files:       CHANGES.txt roundup/backends/back_sqlite.py
description:
compatibilty fix for pysqlite2 / unicode

it applies the text_factory = str for any  version 2 or version 3
sqlite. It encompasses versions earlier than 2.5.0 (which the attached
patch matches), but my guess is any sqlite 2 that is still in use
at this point will be > 2.5.x anyway.

Closing.