`dev_appserver.py: error: too few arguments`

README.md

2017-07-16

dev_appserver.py: error: too few arguments

I encountered this error shortly after installing the Google Cloud SDK. It made no sense, I was in the correct directory and entered the same command as usual:

dev_appserver.py app.yaml

But it didn't work!?

Solution

To keep things short, I'll leave out the stuff I tried but didn't work (e.g. editing the path). I came upon this SO answer, initially I ignored it because it had 0 points and the previous answers hadn't helped but it held the key all along!

Just like pathrik, I had gotten to the point of adding print statements to dev_appserver.py to see what was going on. Adding print("SYS ARG:", sys.argv) to the top of the main() method demonstrated that (for whatever reason) Windows was not passing along arguments to Python; I expected to see "app.yaml" but it was not printed when I ran dev_appserver.py app.yaml.

Steps to fix:

1. Open the registry editor by typing "regedit" in the Windows search bar.

2. Navigate to the correct entry by pasting Computer\HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Applications\python.exe\shell\open\command into the address bar.

3. Edit, modify (an "Edit String" modal should pop open).

4. Add %* to the "Value data:" field. Various stackoverflow users have reported slightly different values for this and I had to experiment a bit to get it right. My complete value field:

"C:\Users\Ben\AppData\Local\Google\Cloud SDK\google-cloud-sdk\platform\bundledpython\python.exe" "%1" %*

Yours will be different if you don't use Cloud SDK's bundled Python.

Hey, thanks for the gist.

I just uninstalled and reinstalled google cloud SDK and I encountered this problem too.

I was trying to follow the steps to fix but it seems like the steps have already been satisfied even without me doing anything.

in the value data, I already have this:

"C:\Python27\python.exe" "%1" %* (I installed python for all users).

Any idea why it's still not working?

Thanks for the tips, bryik, this helped me solve this issue

Thanks for this tips.

Thanks, this was usefull

This was incredibly useful. Thank you!

Thank you very much!

Thank you 👍
This was helpful to me!

hey,someone help me i dont have "python.exe" at that path