Google Cloud App Engine源代码下载遇权限问题：原因排查与解决方案咨询
Hey there, let's work through your problem together:
First, yes—appcfg.py is absolutely deprecated
The appcfg.py tool was officially phased out by Google years ago, replaced entirely by the gcloud CLI. That 401 error you're seeing is directly tied to this deprecation: the old authentication mechanism used by appcfg.py no longer aligns with Google's current Cloud IAM and security policies. The specific permission error (auth.creds.useNormalUserEUC) is a relic of the old appcfg system, so you can stop trying to use this tool—it won't work for modern App Engine environments.
Why your staging bucket is empty
Staging buckets were primarily used by the legacy appcfg.py deployment flow to temporarily store source code during deployments. If your app was deployed using modern tools like the gcloud app deploy command, Cloud Build, or CI/CD pipelines integrated with Google Cloud, source code isn't automatically saved to this bucket. So an empty staging bucket is totally normal for newer deployments.
Steps to retrieve your source code
Here are the most reliable ways to get your app's source code now:
- Use the gcloud CLI to check version details: Run
gcloud app versions describe [VERSION_ID] --service [SERVICE_NAME](replace placeholders with your app's version and service name). This will show you metadata about the deployment, including links to associated Cloud Build artifacts if they exist. - Check Cloud Source Repositories: If your team used Cloud Source Repositories to host the app's code (common for Google Cloud projects), you can clone the repository directly using
gcloud source repos clone [REPO_NAME]—as a project owner, you should have full access. - Look in Cloud Build history: If deployments were handled via Cloud Build, each build stores an archive of the source code used. Go to the Cloud Build console, find the relevant build for your app version, and look for the "Source" section to download the archive.
- Verify backup sources: If none of the above work, check if developers have local copies of the code, or if the code is stored in another version control system (like GitHub, GitLab) linked to the project.
内容的提问来源于stack exchange，提问作者Mark K
