kubectl pyenv python version conflict

Question

I'm trying to run some kubectl commands on my mac, where I use pyenv to manage python versions. whenever I run certain kubectl command, it results in an error where kubectl states it cannot find the python2 command.

josh@venus:~/pjx/distribut_io ❯ kubectl get pods
Unable to connect to the server: error executing access token command "/Users/josh/google-cloud-sdk/bin/gcloud config config-helper --format=json": err=exit status 127 output= stderr=pyenv: python2: command not found

The `python2' command exists in these Python versions:
  2.7.4
  fp


josh@venus:~/pjx/distribut_io ❯ which python
/Users/josh/.pyenv/shims/python
josh@venus:~/pjx/distribut_io ❯ which python2
/Users/josh/.pyenv/shims/python2

I've tried changing .python-version to 2.7.4, system, and a couple other versions, and I can't seem to get this to work. I'm dying for a thread to pull on, can anyone provide some direction?

Answer 1

The kubectl doesn't require Python, but gcloud does.

Here is the part of the gcloud source code (it is written in bash, actually):

#  CLOUDSDK_ROOT_DIR            (a)  installation root dir
#  CLOUDSDK_PYTHON              (u)  python interpreter path
#  CLOUDSDK_PYTHON_ARGS         (u)  python interpreter arguments
#  CLOUDSDK_PYTHON_SITEPACKAGES (u)  use python site packages

...

# Cloud SDK requires python 2.7
case $CLOUDSDK_PYTHON in
*python2*)
  ;;
*python[0-9]*)
  CLOUDSDK_PYTHON=
  ;;
esac
# if CLOUDSDK_PYTHON is empty
if [ -z "$CLOUDSDK_PYTHON" ]; then
  # if python2 exists then plain python may point to a version != 2
  if which python2 >/dev/null; then
    CLOUDSDK_PYTHON=python2
  elif which python2.7 >/dev/null; then
    # this is what some OS X versions call their built-in Python
    CLOUDSDK_PYTHON=python2.7
  else
    CLOUDSDK_PYTHON=python
  fi
fi

So, check your environment variables to understand what is happening when you start gcloud.

As a simple workaround, you can install python2 using homebrew or just make a symlink python2 -> python:

sudo ln -s `which python` $(dirname `which python`)/python2

Another way is to configure pyenv settings as described in pyenv documentation to get necessary python versions in place.