bug#28502: 25.3; list-packages ends with "error in process filter: End of file during parsing"

[Alex Branham]

Hello,

I seem to have encountered a bug. From emacs -Q:

(require 'package)
(setq package-archives
      '(("melpa" . "https://melpa.org/packages/";)
        ("melpa-stable" . "https://stable.melpa.org/packages/";)
        ("gnu" . "https://elpa.gnu.org/packages/";)))
(package-initialize)

Then do M-x list-packages. I get a message "error in process filter: End of 
file during parsing."

In GNU Emacs 25.3.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 3.22.19)
 of 2017-09-16 built on juergen
Windowing system distributor 'The X.Org Foundation', version 11.0.11903000
Configured using:
 'configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --libexecdir=/usr/lib
 --localstatedir=/var --with-x-toolkit=gtk3 --with-xft --with-modules
 'CFLAGS=-march=x86-64 -mtune=generic -O2 -pipe -fstack-protector-strong
 -fno-plt' CPPFLAGS=-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2
 LDFLAGS=-Wl,-O1,--sort-common,--as-needed,-z,relro,-z,now'

Configured features:
XPM JPEG TIFF GIF PNG RSVG IMAGEMAGICK SOUND GPM DBUS GCONF GSETTINGS
NOTIFY ACL GNUTLS LIBXML2 FREETYPE M17N_FLT LIBOTF XFT ZLIB
TOOLKIT_SCROLL_BARS GTK3 X11 MODULES

Important settings:
  value of $LANG: en_US.UTF-8
  locale-coding-system: utf-8-unix