The Wire · Showcase
GOOGLE CLOUD DROPS PYTHON 3.8 AND 3.9 ACROSS THE STACK
By RepoJournal · Filed · About Google
Three critical libraries—sqlalchemy-bigquery, google-crc32c, and google-cloud-dns—are cutting off Python 3.8 and 3.9 support simultaneously, forcing a coordinated migration for any production workload still on those versions.
This is a coordinated push to Python 3.10 minimum across Google's cloud Python ecosystem [1] [2] [3]. sqlalchemy-bigquery, google-crc32c, and google-cloud-dns all moved their baseline in the same window—if you're running BigQuery queries through SQLAlchemy or using DNS clients on older Python, this breaks you. The JAX team, meanwhile, is cleaning up its build system by consolidating the py_strict_* aliases into a unified strict_deps argument in Bazel rules [4], simplifying dependency enforcement without breaking existing workflows. On the GenAI side, python-genai is graduating from experimental status by removing legacy streaming event types and experimental warnings [6] [7], signaling API stability for production use. JAX's test infrastructure also moved from cron-based post-processing to inline BigQuery uploads [5], trading 30 seconds of latency for tighter observability—though runtime jumps to 2 minutes on dev machines. The Pallas kernel API got unwrapped [8] and now supports hijax in mpmd_map [9], reducing abstraction overhead for GPU compute.
Action items
- → Audit production services for Python 3.8/3.9 and plan migration to 3.10+ before next sqlalchemy-bigquery, crc32c, and dns releases ship googleapis/google-cloud-python [immediate]
- → Update Bazel configurations to use strict_deps instead of deprecated py_strict_* rules google/jax [plan]
- → If using GenAI python-genai, expect API surface to harden—experimental warnings now gone, test against current main googleapis/python-genai [monitor]
References
- [1] fix(sqlalchemy-bigquery): Drop support for Python 3.8 and 3.9 (#16956) googleapis/google-cloud-python
- [2] fix(crc32c): Drop support for Python 3.8 and 3.9 (#16955) googleapis/google-cloud-python
- [3] fix(dns): Drop support for Python 3.9 (#16954) googleapis/google-cloud-python
- [4] [bazel] support `strict_deps` argument in `py_*` rules & remove deprecated `py_strict_*` aliases. ↗ google/jax
- [5] [gh] Post-process workflow test results and load into BigQuery. ↗ google/jax
- [6] chore: Remove legacy streaming event types from InteractionSseEvent. ↗ googleapis/python-genai
- [7] chore: Remove experimental warnings for interactions googleapis/python-genai
- [8] [pallas] Removed one level of wrapping from `pl.kernel` google/jax
- [9] [Pallas] Add hijax support to mpmd_map ↗ google/jax
FAQ
- What changed in Google on May 7, 2026?
- Three critical libraries—sqlalchemy-bigquery, google-crc32c, and google-cloud-dns—are cutting off Python 3.8 and 3.9 support simultaneously, forcing a coordinated migration for any production workload still on those versions.
- What should Google teams do about it?
- Audit production services for Python 3.8/3.9 and plan migration to 3.10+ before next sqlalchemy-bigquery, crc32c, and dns releases ship • Update Bazel configurations to use strict_deps instead of deprecated py_strict_* rules • If using GenAI python-genai, expect API surface to harden—experimental warnings now gone, test against current main
- Which Google repositories shipped on May 7, 2026?
- googleapis/google-cloud-python, google/jax, googleapis/python-genai