IssueTracker

Problem you have encountered

• Google Cloud SDK release notes do not mention changes to the gcloud app Python Extensions component.

• App Engine standard environment for Python 2.7 release notes stopped mentioning changes to the Python SDK

  • The last published update was Updated Python SDK to version 1.9.91 on May 11, 2020
  • gcloud SDK 388.0.0 contains version 1.9.100

• There are no release notes for individual versions of gcloud app Python Extensions

• From time to time, various bit of functionality break when running code under dev_appserver.py.

• Attempting to figure out what changed in each release of gcloud app Python Extensions is not directly possible because public source repos do not appear to exist.

What you expected to happen

• The Google Cloud SDK release notes include mention of the gcloud app Python Extensions version.

• The App Engine standard environment for Python 2.7 release notes include mention of the Python SDK version.

• The release process includes more comprehensive notes as to what has changed (bug fixes, features, changes, etc.).

• Developers are made aware of currently known issues via a public "Known Issues" page or other means. This issue tracker does not satisfy this requirement.

• The Google Cloud SDK codebase and/or its components are made available in public source code repos so the community can easily do diffing on the releases should any of the above is not satisfied.

Steps to reproduce

• Install Google Cloud SDK
• Write App Engine Python service and run locally via dev_appserver.py without issues.
• (...time passes...)
• Follow prompts to update to the latest SDK version.
  • This is sometimes needed to use other/newer Google Cloud features!
• Observe that things break when running service locally via dev_appserver.py.
• Spend a lot of time trying to debug and figure out what's going on.
• Resort to doing a gcloud components update --version "bisect" to find when gcloud app Python Extensions version changed.
• Test code under earlier versions to figure out which one broke our service.
• Figure out if a version has other issues we need to be aware of.
• Advise other team members of issue and instruct them to downgrade to an older version.
• File bug report here and wait many months for it to get resolved, if ever.
• Get more frustrated each time this happens.

Other information (workarounds you have tried, documentation consulted, etc)

It's not entirely clear, but I'm assuming that Python SDK and gcloud app Python Extensions are effectively the same thing due to their similar version numbers.