Google App Engine gets git push support

The latest version of Google's App Engine, version 1.8.1, adds the ability to git push deployments of Python and PHP applications to its PaaS (Platform as a Service). Once developers have enabled "Push-to-Deploy" in their applications, they will then be able to clone a repository from the project. After making changes locally, they can then deploy the changed application with the command git push appengine master.

Other features in the update include preview releases of the Search API and Cloud Storage Client Library. The Search API offers applications the ability to perform "Google-like searches" over plain text, HTML, numbers, dates and geographic locations; as the API is now nearing GA (General Availability), Google will be charging for its use. The Cloud Storage Client Library is designed to improve access to Google's Cloud Storage; it overlaps in functionality with the still-experimental Cloud Storage Files API and Google intends to drop the API in a future App Engine update and only support the Client Library.

Smaller changes include support for asynchronous task queues for more efficient request processing and some changes to Google Cloud Datastore to improve performance and Python functionality. Details of these and all the other changes are in the various release notes.

(djwm)