Up-to-date pip with AppEngine Python 3.6 flex env?

[Adam Lugowski]

I want to move an app from the Python 3.7 standard environment to the Python 3.6 flex environment.

Python 3.7 comes with pip 18, Python 3.6 comes with pip 9. Pip 10 introduced a very useful feature, build dependencies. Many analytics packages need this to work, otherwise you have to install build dependencies like Cython manually in a separate step. That is obviously a non-starter in GAE.

Outside of GAE the solution is pip install --upgrade pip.

Is it possible to have the Python 3.6 environment update its pip before it runs pip install -r requirements.txt?

Adding pip to requirements.txt has no effect.

[George (Cloud Platform Support)]

Hello Adam, 

Developers are aware of this feature request, and they are going to evaluate its merit and decide on possible implementation. 

[Adam Lugowski]

Great, thank you!

It seems like it should be as easy as adding a `pip install --upgrade pip` line to the container construction mechanism they're using, so I hope they decide to add the feature.

I guess for today, though, I'll have to go to a custom environment.