app engine standard development environment still requires python2?

[gae123]

After I converted all apps to user python3, I entirely removed python2 from my dev environment only to come to realize that python2 is still necessary as it has previously reported at https://stackoverflow.com/questions/75546135/app-engine-python-3-development-environment

I will put python2 back into the development environment for now but could somebody from the team clarify what the plans are?

PS: I also found put that grpcio and pillow needs to be installed using pip2.

[robertcarlos]

Hi @gae123,

Welcome to Google Cloud Community!

Please be advised that existing Python 2.7 applications will continue to run and receive traffic however you won't be able to deploy or update new or existing applications after the end of support date. 

When runtime components reach the end of support date:

• Google will no longer apply security updates or patches to components of the runtime environment.
• Your application will continue to run and receive traffic.
• You will no longer be able to create and/or update the application on the unsupported runtime.
• Issues arising from the use of an unsupported runtime will not be eligible for technical support

You may check the following documentations that could be helpful in your case:

• Migrate off of legacy bundled services 
• Migrating to the Python 3 runtime 

In conclusion, your existing application will continue to run normally but you won't be able to deploy and update the application using Python 2.

Hope this helps.

[gae123]

@robertcarlos As I mention in the post we do not have any python27 applications any more. After the migration, we now have python3 services, working fine in production, that still use some of the so called "legacy bundled services" as described at https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/standard/python3/services/access

I was surprised to realize that on the development side, this still requires python2 in the development environment.

Even more, I want to confirm that this dependency is not affected by the Jan 24 upcoming deadline.

[NoCommandLine]

Technically, it isn't the bundled services that need Python 2.7 (it's an indirect dependency)

dev_appserver.py is what needs a Python 27 interpreter (see documentation). However, the bundled services only currently work locally when you run it with dev_appserver.py (when you don't, it you get some error about a missing security context or something like that). When you deploy to Production, Google runs it (you no longer have to worry about dev_appserver.py)

So, to answer your question - You're not authoring your code using Python27 syntax and your app.yaml doesn't have Python 27 as the runtime. Therefore, I don't believe you're subject to  the Jan 31 deadline

... NoCommandLine ......

 https://nocommandline.com

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[micdearmas]

Hi @gae123 , not long ago I was asking the same (or very similar) question as you could see here.
After clarifying a couple of things, I put a feature request to have support for all that in Python3 without the need for Python2 in dev.

If you think you could benefit from that as well, maybe you could add your vote to help have that implemented.
Cheers,
Michael