Upgrading PHP in Google App Engine

Question

With PHP 5.5 no longer being actively supported and security support ending in a few months I thought it might be a good idea to upgrade. I use GAE and I thought this would be as simple as changing

runtime: php55

in my application's app.yaml file to

runtime: php56

but I get the error

Updating module [default]...-ERROR: (gcloud.preview.app.deploy) Server responded with code [400]:

Bad Request Unexpected HTTP status 400.

Invalid runtime or the current user is not authorized to use it.

I have searched Google's documentation, but I can't seem to figure out how to specify another version of PHP.

Answer 1

Only PHP 5.5 is supported currently.

If you want to use 5.6 or above, consider Managed VMs (with a custom runtime).

Worth noting that Managed VMs are currently avert different "beast" and do not have the same features, support or characteristics as AppEngine.

https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/managed-vms/