gcloud command says `pyenv: python2: command not found` even if python2 is valid in terminal

Question

I'm using macOS Mojave 10.14.2, and pyenv 1.2.7 .

And these are my configs of pyenv. python2 seems to work in the terminal.

$ pyenv versions
  system
* 2.7.14
  3.6.4

$ pyenv global
2.7.14
3.6.4

$ pyenv local
2.7.14

$ python2
Python 2.7.14 (default, Sep 12 2018, 16:35:37)
[GCC 4.2.1 Compatible Apple LLVM 9.0.0 (clang-900.0.39.2)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> (It works!)

But when I use gcloud command, it fails saying it cannot find python2.

$ gcloud config list
pyenv: python2: command not found

The `python2' command exists in these Python versions:
  2.7.14

On the other hand, npm command, which requires python2 too, works fine.

It get fixed by pyenv shell command temporarily, but it is valid only until I close the terminal. (The solution is referred here: https://github.com/pyenv/pyenv/issues/1159)

$ pyenv shell 2.7.14 3.6.4
$ gcloud config list -> Works!

How to fix this problem permanently ?

Answer 1

I was recently encountering this error and found a solution. I am using pyenv with virtual env (pyenv-viritualenv) and I was attempting to run gcloud from inside my python 3 virtual environment.

The issue is that when you run gcloud from a location within the virtualenv, it only knows of the python versions specified in the .python-version file for that directory. You therefore have to specify a python 2 version to run in addition to your python 3 version:

pyenv local <virtualenv name> <python 2 version>

I did this in addition to doing the CLOUDSDK_PYTHON bit mentioned in answers on other related questions:

export CLOUDSDK_PYTHON=$(which python2)

I added this to my .bash_profile