Programming Google App Engine

Chapter 15. Deploying and Managing Applications

Uploading your application to App Engine is easy: just click a button or run a command, then enter your developer account email address and password. All of your application’s code, configuration, and static files are sent to App Engine, and seconds later your new app is running.

Easy deployment is one of App Engine’s most useful features. You don’t have to worry about which servers have which software, how servers connect to services, or whether machines need to be rebooted or processes restarted. Other than your developer account, there are no database passwords to remember, no secret keys to generate, and no need to administer and troubleshoot individual machines. Your application exists as a single logical entity, and running it on large-scale infrastructure is as easy as running it on your local computer.

App Engine includes features for testing a new version of an app before making it public, reverting to a previous version quickly in case of a problem, and migrating the datastore and service configuration for the app from one version to another. These features let you control how quickly changes are applied to your application: you can make a new version public immediately to fix small bugs, or you can test a new version for a while before making it the version everyone sees.

Service configuration is shared across all versions of an app, including datastore indexes, task queues, and scheduled tasks. When you upload the app, the ...