GDAL in flexible environment

Question

In app engine flexible environment, I\'m trying to run django on postgresql db using GIS extensions. Can run locally, and it eventually finished deploying to cloud successfu

Answer 1

The app engine flexible environment comes with the C libraries listed here: https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/flexible/python/runtime

Since GDAL is a C library that isn't in the runtimes that come standard, I had to build a custom environment using a Docker container. The trick was getting GDAL installed along with the necessary python libraries in requirements.txt and Python3, then starting the django app thru gunicorn.

Here's my Dockerfile:

FROM gcr.io/google-appengine/python

RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y \
  binutils \
  gdal-bin \
  python-gdal

# Create a virtualenv for dependencies. This isolates these packages from
# system-level packages.
RUN virtualenv /env -p python3.6

# Setting these environment variables are the same as running
# source /env/bin/activate.
ENV VIRTUAL_ENV /env
ENV PATH /env/bin:$PATH

# Copy the application's requirements.txt and run pip to install all
# dependencies into the virtualenv.
ADD requirements.txt /app/requirements.txt
RUN pip install -r /app/requirements.txt
# Add the application source code.
ADD . /app

# Run a WSGI server to serve the application. gunicorn must be declared as
# a dependency in requirements.txt.
CMD gunicorn -b :$PORT mysite.wsgi

My app.yaml:

# [START runtime]
runtime: custom
#python
env: flex
entrypoint: gunicorn -b :$PORT mysite.wsgi

beta_settings:
    cloud_sql_instances: <your-db-instance-identifying-string>

runtime_config:
  python_version: 3
# [END runtime]

And the minimum requirements.txt (add to as needed):

Django==1.11.4
mysqlclient==1.3.10
wheel==0.29.0
gunicorn==19.7.1
psycopg2==2.7.3

Hope this helps someone,

Dan