But when I look for "should be" in my test output file, it is many lines away from the failure message.
That's autoloading for you.
Can you trace LOAD* COMPILE-FILE* and/or COMPILE-FILE LOAD and check that indeed :EXTERNAL-FORMAT :UTF-8 is used?
If it isn't, then it's a bug in our code or test (Note: considering the portable nature of the code, and the fact that it works for me, that is unlikely.)
If it is, then it's time to file a bug against ABCL. (Note: considering that I already had to disable most of the test for ABCL, that is very likely.)
rlwrap abcl (load "test/script-support.lisp") (da) (la) (trace load compile-file load* compile-file*) (load "test/test-encodings.script")
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