Future of dev_appserver.py - deprecated?

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James Crowley

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Jun 13, 2019, 7:32:52 PM6/13/19
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Am I right in inferring that dev_appserver.py is on the way to being deprecated, given the later language versions are not supported?

I've tripped up trying to use it in the php7 environment - it prompts me to provide a --php_executable argument for php72 environments (making me think it was supported), but then doesn't seem to actually support the environment ("The url "/" does not match any handlers." which goes away when you use the php55 app.yaml syntax for specifying handlers rather than the single entrypoint parameter)

I then noticed it's not mentioned in the docs for php72/Java 11 etc at all?

Thanks!

James

Nicolas (Google Cloud Platform Support)

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Jun 14, 2019, 12:30:48 PM6/14/19
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Hi James,

 

Thanks for opening this thread,

 

To answer your question you are right the dev_appserver.py is not supported with the PHP 7.2 and PHP 7.3 runtimes.

 

To test your app locally you can download and install PHP 7.2 or PHP 7.3 and set up a web server.

 

Dev_appserver.py will still be available for PHP 5/7 and no deprecation is planned for the moment.

James Crowley

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Jun 14, 2019, 5:10:21 PM6/14/19
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If there are alternatives I'm missing this would be awesome? The feedback cycle is super slow when testing Google cloud specific code when it takes 30 seconds+ to update a running app (and that's ignoring the downsides of only being able to work online)

Thanks

J

Andrew Gorcester

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Jun 14, 2019, 5:10:21 PM6/14/19
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We're aiming to build all of our new runtimes so that they don't require dev_appserver.py, by making them support the same APIs and idiomatic local development practices that one would use on any platform. If you don't mind me asking, what are the features of dev_appserver.py that are still useful with the newer runtimes, which do not have App Engine-specific APIs and client libraries that dev_appserver was originally intended to mock and emulate?

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Andrew Gorcester

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Jun 14, 2019, 5:43:05 PM6/14/19
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The recommended alternative is to use what is idiomatic for your framework or other development process, as you would outside of Google Cloud. This is now possible because we no longer require the use of App Engine-specific APIs, handlers definitions, etc. However, dev_appserver.py did have some features beyond emulating App Engine APIs and processing handlers that some people have integrated into their workflows, so if this new approach doesn't work well for you, please let us know where the pain points are.

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Nicolas Grilly

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Jun 14, 2019, 6:02:35 PM6/14/19
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On Friday, June 14, 2019 at 11:10:21 PM UTC+2, Andrew Gorcester wrote:
If you don't mind me asking, what are the features of dev_appserver.py that are still useful with the newer runtimes, which do not have App Engine-specific APIs and client libraries that dev_appserver was originally intended to mock and emulate?

dev_appserver.py seems still useful to emulate dispatch.yaml and static handlers locally. Is there an alternative?

Andrew Gorcester

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Jun 14, 2019, 6:43:41 PM6/14/19
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We don't have a replacement for that functionality yet, but I'll record that that's a missing link for people migrating. Thank you!

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dir Ls

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Jun 16, 2019, 12:36:29 PM6/16/19
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The purpose of app engine standard is so developers can focus no the app and not worry about the rest. To me, dev_appserver.py is a pre-req to encourage app developers to get on to GCP very easily. Hope App Engine Standard itself is not going to get deprecated!


On Friday, June 14, 2019 at 3:43:41 PM UTC-7, Andrew Gorcester wrote:
We don't have a replacement for that functionality yet, but I'll record that that's a missing link for people migrating. Thank you!

On Fri, Jun 14, 2019 at 3:02 PM Nicolas Grilly <nic...@garden-paris.com> wrote:
On Friday, June 14, 2019 at 11:10:21 PM UTC+2, Andrew Gorcester wrote:
If you don't mind me asking, what are the features of dev_appserver.py that are still useful with the newer runtimes, which do not have App Engine-specific APIs and client libraries that dev_appserver was originally intended to mock and emulate?

dev_appserver.py seems still useful to emulate dispatch.yaml and static handlers locally. Is there an alternative?

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Nicolas (Google Cloud Platform Support)

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Jun 17, 2019, 11:59:09 AM6/17/19
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Hi,

 

I totally agree with you, we have to make App Engine the easiest and most intuitive experience the developer that's why in the second generation we made it easier to run locally by being able to run locally with the tools that you normally use.

 

Alse you can test your application by deploying with the --no-promote flag which would deploy the application without allocating any traffic to the deployed version.

 

gcloud app deploy --no-promote


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