Managed VM old docs anywhere ?

Su-Au Hwang

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Mar 8, 2016, 11:03:32 AM3/8/16

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Hi, I'm looking for the old App Engine Managed VM Docs, the ones with the local VirtualBox and Docker installation.
Any way to get a hold of them ?

Thanks in advance.

Zeehad (Cloud Platform Support)

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Mar 9, 2016, 2:04:09 PM3/9/16

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Hello Su-Au,

The docs you're referring to, aren't available in Google Cloud Platform Documentation anymore as they are obsolete. I noticed the Internet Archive still has some snapshots however the links may be broken.

Cheers!

Su-Au Hwang

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Mar 10, 2016, 2:24:47 AM3/10/16

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Thanks for looking up the docs.

Too bad, it seems like `gcloud preview app run` has been removed form the Google Cloud SDK, so it probably won't work anymore.

The new docs are vastly inferior when it comes to:

Extending Standard Runtimes
Building Custom Runtimes

Additionally the new developer experience is seriously lacking compared to Classic App Engine or the previous Docker method:

No integrated way of using local App Engine features like we had with dev_appserver.py, e.g. datastore: Now we still have to be connected to the cloud and make sure we're using a different database for local testing than for production ? Or we have to set up something local ourselves and add all the logic necessary.
No Consistent Environment. There is no way of knowing if the code we wrote and tested locally is going to run properly on App Engine. Just take the official Node.js HelloWorld tutorial as an example (https://cloud.google.com/nodejs/getting-started/hello-world): Basically pick a random Node.js installation, test locally. Deploy and pray that the provided environment from the Standard Runtime isn't breaking anything.

It's true I can still develop just using Docker for MVM locally and after the local version of datastore has been replaced with http calls to google services, there is probably no difference anymore.

This is a huge step backwards in regards of developer experience.

pdknsk

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Mar 10, 2016, 3:06:19 AM3/10/16

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I agree with you on most points, but want to point out that this has already been discussed quite a bit with the Google Cloud SDK developers.

To read up on (and join) the discussion I recommend to read comment #27 in the following bug report, and the forum discussion mentioned a few comments later.

https://code.google.com/p/google-cloud-sdk/issues/detail?id=163#c27

Su-Au Hwang

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Mar 10, 2016, 4:15:59 AM3/10/16

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Thanks for the link!
I've seen Appstart before and it looks like a great solution, albeit not officially supported.

I'm just disappointed that they almost gave us a nice solution and then removed it again. Although the Image Service and Cloud Storage has never been implemented anyways, not even on classic.

For now I'll write clean code and abstract away the datastore/taskqueue other google services completely and replace it with a different implementation for testing locally. More work, but the result would be more portable and nicer code.

Any hints for making working with MVMs simpler/easier are welcome.

Jon Parrott

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Mar 10, 2016, 2:10:13 PM3/10/16

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We'd love to hear feedback on how we can make the extending runtime and building custom runtime pages better as well.

Su-Au Hwang

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Mar 10, 2016, 4:10:28 PM3/10/16

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Having something like in the old docs would be good.

Just to make sure I'm not missing anything:

I've checked these two pages:

https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/managed-vms/
https://cloud.google.com/docs/ (The Node.js/Ruby/Python/Go starter)

Here is all I could currently find about extending/custorm runtimes:

Basically it says it can be done and describes port 8080, start/stop, healthchecks, logging.

But there are no examples at all. And because of the "better" dockerless getting started experience, the user hasn't even seen or worked with any dockerfile yet. Probably not even virtualbox/docker/boot2docker installed.

At latest now, this should happen. While it isn't strictly necessary, I wouldn't expect anyone to write a flawless dockerfile without testing it locally.

Compared to the old docs, there were examples

for extending a standard runtime:

for building a custom runtime

https://web.archive.org/web/20150321081655/https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/managed-vms/custom-runtimes

on top of that, the user had worked with docker through out the basic tutorial already.

If this sounds like a rant, then it's because I've mentioned that here already:

https://groups.google.com/forum/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer#!searchin/google-appengine-go/Managed$20VM$20GOPATH$20issues/google-appengine-go/LQMhpx447hI/2qgNgNoyl2EJ

,but was told

"Getting Started with Managed VMs" experience was painful due to the need for VirtualBox, boot2docker, and Docker.

I understand that "Getting Started" should be kept as simple as possible and advanced usages kept for later. But it was simply removed.

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