This tools is required to build a OSX disk image (make deploy).
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/a6a860796a44a2805a58391a009ba22752f64e32/depends/packages/native_ds_store.mk
The tool is currently not python3 compatible (uses basestring).
Upstream: https://bitbucket.org/al45tair/ds_store/
I did submit this upstream: https://bitbucket.org/al45tair/mac_alias/pull-requests/4/further-python-3-compatiblity/diff
ds_store needed no changes by me, at least.
Apparently this is another library that requires porting to Python 3. As this is a native tool and I don't have a mac available to test this so I can't be of help here.
Looks like the Python3 patch in question can be found here: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/depends/patches/native_mac_alias/python3.patch
The patch was also submitted as a pull request by @droark: https://github.com/al45tair/mac_alias/pull/3
So native_mac_alias needs to apply the patch and release a new version.
Hello. My patch that @thijstriemstra referenced was just pulled. I don't think there's a new release out yet, though. I'm going to go ahead and make a PR that deletes this patch from the Core repo. I don't expect or want it to be deleted just yet, and the patch will need to update the depends once a new version comes out. It'll just be there for when it's needed.
Looks like this was addressed in #12417, closing issue now