title: ImportError running Google's python appengine on Ubuntu
body: <p>I'm trying to teach myself python using Google's <a href="http://code.google.com/appengine/downloads.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">AppEngine</a>, and I can't get the dev server running. I get this error:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>Traceback (most recent call last):<br>
    File "/opt/google_appengine/google_appengine_1.2.7/dev_appserver.py",
    line 60, in 
        run_file(<strong>file</strong>, globals())   File
    "/opt/google_appengine/google_appengine_1.2.7/dev_appserver.py",
    line 57, in run_file
        execfile(script_path, globals_)   File
    "/opt/google_appengine/google_appengine_1.2.7/google/appengine/tools/dev_appserver_main.py",
    line 65, in 
        from google.appengine.tools import os_compat ImportError: cannot import
    name os_compat</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>Ubuntu 9.10 comes with python2.6 (didn't work), and I installed python2.5 (didn't work), and have tried running it with <code>python dev_appserver.py helloWorld</code> (didn't work) as well as running dev_appserver.py after editing the first line to be:</p>
  
  <pre><code>#!/usr/bin/env python2.5
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I can't seem to find anything online with this error. The only problem I've found is about using python 2.5, and I think I've solved that.</p>
  
  <p>Kyle suggested I need to set my PYTHONPATH variable. After running</p>
  
  <pre><code>export PYTHONPATH=/opt/google_appengine/google_appengine_1.2.7
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I still get the same error trying to run dev_appserver.py. Am I setting PYTHONPATH wrong? Alternatively, how do I uninstall the protocol buffers python project? I have no use for Ubuntu One and had already uninstalled it.</p>