ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'google.cloud.location' - google-app-engine

Question

We have an application that uses firestore. It is running on Python 3.x on standard Google app engine. The application was running fine, till this morning when we tried to run the new version. The deployment of the new version is executed without any error. The requirement.txt is as follows -
firebase_admin==3.0.0
sendgrid==6.9.3
google-auth==1.35.0
google-auth-httplib2==0.1.0
jinja2==3.0.3
MarkupSafe==2.0.1
pytz==2021.3
Flask==2.0.2
twilio==6.46.0
httplib2==0.20.2
requests==2.24.0
requests_toolbelt==0.9.1
google-cloud-tasks==2.7.1
google-cloud-logging==1.15.1
googleapis-common-protos==1.54.0
protobuf==3.20.1
We get the following error.
File "/layers/google.python.pip/pip/lib/python3.7/site-packages/google/cloud/firestore_v1/services/firestore/client.py", line 55, in <module>
from google.cloud.location import locations_pb2 # type: ignore
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'google.cloud.location'
Please help.
Updated (9-24-2022) with the complete error output.
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/layers/google.python.pip/pip/lib/python3.7/site-packages/gunicorn/arbiter.py", line 589, in spawn_worker
worker.init_process()
File "/layers/google.python.pip/pip/lib/python3.7/site-packages/gunicorn/workers/gthread.py", line 92, in init_process
super().init_process()
File "/layers/google.python.pip/pip/lib/python3.7/site-packages/gunicorn/workers/base.py", line 134, in init_process
self.load_wsgi()
File "/layers/google.python.pip/pip/lib/python3.7/site-packages/gunicorn/workers/base.py", line 146, in load_wsgi
self.wsgi = self.app.wsgi()
File "/layers/google.python.pip/pip/lib/python3.7/site-packages/gunicorn/app/base.py", line 67, in wsgi
self.callable = self.load()
File "/layers/google.python.pip/pip/lib/python3.7/site-packages/gunicorn/app/wsgiapp.py", line 58, in load
return self.load_wsgiapp()
File "/layers/google.python.pip/pip/lib/python3.7/site-packages/gunicorn/app/wsgiapp.py", line 48, in load_wsgiapp
return util.import_app(self.app_uri)
File "/layers/google.python.pip/pip/lib/python3.7/site-packages/gunicorn/util.py", line 359, in import_app
mod = importlib.import_module(module)
File "/opt/python3.7/lib/python3.7/importlib/__init__.py", line 127, in import_module
return _bootstrap._gcd_import(name[level:], package, level)
File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 1006, in _gcd_import
File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 983, in _find_and_load
File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 967, in _find_and_load_unlocked
File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 677, in _load_unlocked
File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap_external>", line 728, in exec_module
File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 219, in _call_with_frames_removed
File "/srv/main.py", line 8, in <module>
from controllers import server, common, header
File "/srv/controllers/server.py", line 19, in <module>
from controllers import basehandler
File "/srv/controllers/basehandler.py", line 12, in <module>
from google.cloud import firestore
File "/layers/google.python.pip/pip/lib/python3.7/site-packages/google/cloud/firestore/__init__.py", line 18, in <module>
from google.cloud.firestore_v1 import __version__
File "/layers/google.python.pip/pip/lib/python3.7/site-packages/google/cloud/firestore_v1/__init__.py", line 36, in <module>
from google.cloud.firestore_v1.async_client import AsyncClient
File "/layers/google.python.pip/pip/lib/python3.7/site-packages/google/cloud/firestore_v1/async_client.py", line 45, in <module>
from google.cloud.firestore_v1.async_transaction import AsyncTransaction
File "/layers/google.python.pip/pip/lib/python3.7/site-packages/google/cloud/firestore_v1/async_transaction.py", line 49, in <module>
from google.cloud.firestore_v1.client import Client
File "/layers/google.python.pip/pip/lib/python3.7/site-packages/google/cloud/firestore_v1/client.py", line 44, in <module>
from google.cloud.firestore_v1.services.firestore import client as firestore_client
File "/layers/google.python.pip/pip/lib/python3.7/site-packages/google/cloud/firestore_v1/services/firestore/__init__.py", line 16, in <module>
from .client import FirestoreClient
File "/layers/google.python.pip/pip/lib/python3.7/site-packages/google/cloud/firestore_v1/services/firestore/client.py", line 55, in <module>
from google.cloud.location import locations_pb2 # type: ignore
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'google.cloud.location'

Answer 1

It looks like Google made a mistake in setting requirements for one its Python packages.
If you create a new virtual environment, install with pip install -r you should be able to recreate the error you are seeing in production.
To fix it, I would do pip list on your local machine (in the environment that is still working) and add fixed versions of other installed google packages until it works.
You can test by creating a new Python virtual environment, installing with pip install -r and seeing if it works.
It is a tedious process unfortunately.

Answer 2

I got this exact same error just now while trying to link a Python script to Firestore. I don't know if this is a "correct" solution but I got my code to run and save data to my Firestore database after this doing this.
In the error message, this line specifies the file where google.cloud.location is being imported:
File "/layers/google.python.pip/pip/lib/python3.10/site-packages/google/cloud/firestore_v1/services/firestore/client.py", line 55, in <module>
If you open the client.py file and comment out the line 55 ("from google.cloud.location import locations_pb2 # type: ignore"), then run your code again, the next error message will show the other file where google.cloud.location is being imported. Repeat this process for all five files where this module is imported. (client.py, base.py, grpc.py, grpc_asyncio.py, async_client.py)
From searching through the code, I'm seeing that locations_pb2 (imported from google.cloud.location) is never used. I suspect that commenting this out entirely won't affect the functionality of firebase_admin.