Nose GAE : Cannot import dev_appserver, but app engine is still in PYTHONPATH - google-app-engine

Question

I am getting the following error when trying to run the nosetest from my GAE project:
nosetests --nologcapture --with-gae --without-sandbox --gae-lib-root=/Users/dsinha/Dropbox/code/google-cloud-sdk/platform/google_appengine
but I get the following error:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/local/bin/nosetests", line 8, in <module>
load_entry_point('nose==1.3.4', 'console_scripts', 'nosetests')()
File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/nose/core.py", line 121, in __init__
**extra_args)
File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/unittest/main.py", line 94, in __init__
self.parseArgs(argv)
File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/nose/core.py", line 145, in parseArgs
self.config.configure(argv, doc=self.usage())
File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/nose/config.py", line 346, in configure
self.plugins.configure(options, self)
File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/nose/plugins/manager.py", line 284, in configure
cfg(options, config)
File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/nose/plugins/manager.py", line 99, in __call__
return self.call(*arg, **kw)
File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/nose/plugins/manager.py", line 167, in simple
result = meth(*arg, **kw)
File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/nosegae.py", line 87, in configure
from google.appengine.tools import old_dev_appserver as dev_appserver
ImportError: cannot import name old_dev_appserver
The sys.path reads:
'/Users/dsinha/Downloads/eclipse/plugins/org.python.pydev_3.9.0.201411111611/pysrc', '/Users/dsinha/Dropbox/code/google-cloud-sdk/platform/google_appengine/lib/antlr3', '/Users/dsinha/Dropbox/code/google-cloud-sdk/platform/google_appengine/lib/fancy_urllib', '/Users/dsinha/Dropbox/code/google-cloud-sdk/platform/google_appengine/lib/ipaddr', '/Users/dsinha/Dropbox/code/google-cloud-sdk/platform/google_appengine/lib/yaml-3.10', '/Users/dsinha/Dropbox/code/google-cloud-sdk/platform/google_appengine/lib/rsa', '/Users/dsinha/Dropbox/code/google-cloud-sdk/platform/google_appengine/lib/pyasn1', '/Users/dsinha/Dropbox/code/google-cloud-sdk/platform/google_appengine/lib/pyasn1_modules', '/Users/dsinha/Dropbox/code/google-cloud-sdk/platform/google_appengine', '/Users/dsinha/Dropbox/code/google-cloud-sdk/platform/google_appengine/lib/simplejson', '/Users/dsinha/Dropbox/code/google-cloud-sdk/platform/google_appengine/lib/django-1.4', '/Users/dsinha/Dropbox/code/google-cloud-sdk/platform/goo...
so the app engine libraries should be getting pulled in. Actually its first failing to pull in dev_appserver, and then trying and failing to pull old_dev_appserver
The dir inside the appengine/lib file is:
bash-3.2$ ls
__init__.py appcfg.py backends_xml_parser.py dispatch_xml_parser.py handler_generator.py php_cli.py value_mixin.pyc
__init__.pyc appcfg_java.py boolean_action.py docker handler_generator.pyc queue_xml_parser.py web_xml_parser.py
adaptive_thread_pool.py appengine_rpc.py boolean_action.pyc dos_xml_parser.py jarfile.py queue_xml_parser.pyc web_xml_parser.pyc
api_server.py appengine_rpc.pyc bulkload_client.py download_appstats.py java_quickstart.py remote_api_shell.py xml_parser_utils.py
app_engine_config_exception.py appengine_rpc_httplib2.py bulkloader.py endpointscfg.py java_quickstart.pyc requeue.py xml_parser_utils.pyc
app_engine_config_exception.pyc augment_mimetypes.py cron_xml_parser.py gen_protorpc.py java_utils.py sdk_update_checker.py yaml_translator.py
app_engine_web_xml_parser.py augment_mimetypes.pyc dev-channel-js.js handler.py java_utils.pyc sdk_update_checker.pyc yaml_translator.pyc
app_engine_web_xml_parser.pyc backends_conversion.py devappserver2 handler.pyc os_compat.py value_mixin.py
bash-3.2$ pwd
/Users/dsinha/Dropbox/code/google-cloud-sdk/platform/google_appengine/google/appengine/tools
I also tried to find the modules available inside the google.appengine.tools package:
>>> import pkgutil
>>> [name for _, name, _ in pkgutil.iter_modules(['testpkg'])]
[]
This problem started occuring after I upgraded to App Engine 1.9.10 (to use the async search features). In a problem that I think is related, when I try to run the debug server from PyDev, it just silently terminated on any page request (localhost:8080).
Running dev_appserver . from the command line works fine though.

Answer 1

Nose-GAE broke with App Engine 1.9.17: https://github.com/Trii/NoseGAE/issues/6
Downgrading to 1.9.15 made the problem go away temporarily while waiting for the issue to be resolved by nose-gae