Firestore Client Doesn't Work in Python 3.3

[hiranya911]

Firestore library doesn't work on Python 3.3. Here's a sequence of steps to reproduce:

$ virtualenv sandbox
$ cd sandbox
$ source bin/activate
$ pip install google-cloud-firestore --upgrade
$ python --version
Python 3.3.0

$ python -c 'from google.cloud import firestore'
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/usr/local/google/home/hkj/Projects/firebase-admin-python/public/sandbox/lib/python3.3/site-packages/google/cloud/firestore.py", line 18, in <module>
    from google.cloud.firestore_v1beta1 import __version__
  File "/usr/local/google/home/hkj/Projects/firebase-admin-python/public/sandbox/lib/python3.3/site-packages/google/cloud/firestore_v1beta1/__init__.py", line 20, in <module>
    from google.cloud.firestore_v1beta1 import types
ImportError: cannot import name types

The issue seems to be grpc-related. The dependency takes an unusually long time to install.

Here's a link to a Travis build of the Firebase Admin SDK which depends on Firestore. Note how things fail only in the Python 3.3 environment.

[lukesneeringer]

Officially, we only support Python 3.4 and up (and 2.7), in keeping with the policy if most other large open source projects. That said, we will take a look at this and fix it if it is straightforward. :-)

[tseaver]

This is most likely down to pip / setuptools bugs WRT namespace packages. @hiranya911, can you please try adding the following:

$ pip install --upgrade setuptools pip

Before installing google-cloud-firestore?

[hiranya911]

@tseaver Same error as before. Nothing was updated when I tried to upgrade setuptools and pip. My versions are:

• pip 9.0.1
• setuptools 36.5.0

Given that this also occurs in a Travis CI environment, I doubt that it is due to outdated tools.

[dhermes]

Given that this also occurs in a Travis CI environment, I doubt that it is due to outdated tools.

Travis CI is not notorious for having up-to-date environments, e.g. their latest Ubuntu image is the previous LTS from April 2014.

[lukesneeringer]

Hi @hiranya911,
I looked into this, and the ImportError is actually coming from grpc, which is issuing import enum.

enum was added to the standard library in Python 3.4, but there is a backport on PyPI for previous versions (pip install enum34). If you install enum34 from pip when using Python 3.3, things might work.

What I mean by "things might work" -- doing so will get you past that particular ImportError. I do not guarantee everything will work past that, since we do not officially support or test on Python 3.3. (Your chances are decent that everything will work fine, though.)

[lukesneeringer]

@hiranya911 I also filed grpc/grpc#12976 that will fix this on their side.

Again, no promises of Python 3.3 support, but this seems like sufficiently low hanging fruit.