Google App Engine with Django 1.0

Google App Engine has offered Django 0.96 out of the box since it launched in mid 2008. That has changed as of this month.

Applications can now choose either Django 0.96 or what is currently the latest stable release, 1.0.2. This means there is no need to post a zipfile to your appspot in order to utilize the latest Django. But is it that simple? Not quite.

While the cloud has the latest version, your local server environ does not. In other words, the SDK and appspot server are a bit different. This means you still need the Django Helper to run 1.0.2 locally, where you will probably be developing your site.

I went through this process and found many resources to shed light on the procedure. Some are more suited than others, due to good but out-of-date info on the woodpile. Here's what did work:

• Google Code documentation on the Python SDK - what I like to think of as the GAE personal web server, though it's actually that and a bit more.
• Google documentation on the Django Helper - required reading but terse. Provides and describes a turnkey local project running Django 1.0.2.
• Finally, from Bubble Foundry in Nederland, the paydirt, aka how to get it done, aka as direct as a battleaxe to the head. Thanks, I needed that!

Good luck setting up your dev environment. Google labs makes it not so bad after all.