The App Engine development environment

Software Development Kits (SDKs) for App Engine

Important: The GoogleAppEngineLauncher is a convenient UI-based tool for running and deploying App Engine apps, but it does not provide all the features you'll need. You will need to use the command-line equivalent, appcfg.py, for many of the features you'll want to use.

To install the SDK on Windows:

  1. You will need Python 2.7 to use the App Engine SDK.
  2. Download the SDK for Python.
  3. Double-click the SDK file you downloaded and follow the prompts to install the SDK.

To install the SDK on Mac OS X:

  1. Download the SDK for Python.
  2. In the Finder, click Go > Applications to open the Applications folder.
  3. Double click the App Engine SDK file you downloaded to open it, then drag the GoogleAppEngineLauncher icon over to the Applications folder.
  4. Double-click GoogleAppEngineLauncher in the Application folder.
  5. When prompted to Make command symlinks, click OK. The symlinks allow you to run important SDK command-line tools in any terminal window.
  6. Notice that the installation process above unpacks the contents of the App Engine SDK at the location: 
    /usr/local/google_appengine
  7. The App Engine SDK requires Python 2.7, which is installed by default on Mac OS X 10.6 (Lion) or later. Verify your Mac's Python installation using the following command: 
    /usr/bin/env python -V
    If the output looks like Python 2.7.<number> then you already have the correct Python version installed. Otherwise you can download and install Python 2.7 from the Python web site.

The SDK

The SDK manages your application locally, while the Developers Console manages your application in production. The Administration Console uses a web-based interface to create new applications, configure domain names, change which version of your application is live, examine access and error logs, and much more.