This weekend’s annoying problem is this. New gcloud SDK is great, it is installed through Ubuntu Software Center (apt-get) etc. However, when you install it like that, even though you can deploy the Google App Engine apps; you would not be able to run the local server to see your changes locally for the python GAE app. Example:

  • Run the development server:

dev_appserver.py main.app.yaml

Output: dev_appserver.py command not found

  • List the components:

gcloud components list

│ Uninstalled │ gcloud app Python Extensions │ app-engine-python │ 6.1 MiB │

  • Install the python SDK to use dev_appserver.py

gcloud components install app-engine-python

Output: You cannot perform this action because this Cloud SDK installation is managed by an external package manager.

  • The reason is that it’s installed through apt-get, instead we should uninstall that version through apt and then reinstall in the old way.

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt autoremove google-cloud-sdk

  • Install in an old way, this will ask you if you want to delete the old folders. Say yes to that.

curl -sSL https://sdk.cloud.google.com | bash -

  • Now we have the proper gcloud, we can give it a try to install the python SDK:

gcloud components install app-engine-python

  • Boom, worked; try this in your GAE app:

dev_appserver.py main.app.yaml