Compute Engine API gets date-based versions: release notes say GA on September 29, blog is dated November 5, Python client 1.55.0 removed fields
Google Cloud lists date-based Compute Engine API versions as generally available beside /v1; Google pages word support terms differently, and Python client 1.55.0 removed fields.
Overview
Google Cloud has made interface-based versioning (IBV) for the Compute Engine API generally available, according to an entry dated September 29, 2026 in the Compute Engine release notes. The same entry lists API version 2026-09-01 as generally available and 2026-10-01-preview as available in Preview. Google’s blog post, dated November 5, 2026, says callers choose a version with the X-Goog-Api-Version header or the $apiVersion query parameter on the existing /compute/v1/ base URL path, and that /v1 “continues to serve as the default if no date-based version is specified.” InfoQ reported the change on November 14, 2026. This article uses the dates as the pages print them; the blog post and InfoQ do not mention September 29.
What the pages say about versions
Per the blog, stable versions are named YYYY-MM-DD and released quarterly, starting with 2026-09-01, and “Stable versions don’t receive breaking changes after they’re published.” Preview versions carry a -preview suffix and “a predictable one-year lifespan,” the blog says. The Compute Engine versioning guide, which prints “Last updated 2026-11-10 UTC,” says new IBV versions “are planned with quarterly releases” and that preview versions “can be released at any time.”
Google’s pages word some points differently. On support, the blog says stable versions “have no end-of-support date today,” while the guide’s FAQ says “Stable versions are maintained in perpetuity under the standard Google Cloud deprecation policy.” That FAQ answer does not link to the policy, and the Herald found no cited page that reconciles the two wordings. On previews, the guide states no lifespan; it says “We may change, refine, or remove preview features while promoting them to a stable release.”
On /v1, the blog says it “remains fully supported.” The guide says “IBV supersedes CBV” (CBV is channel-based versioning, with v1, beta and alpha channels), that existing v1 requests “continue to work as before,” and that “you won’t be able to access new features available in IBV API.” The release-notes page header reads “Latest API version: v1.” InfoQ says /v1 “has no end-of-life date”; none of the Google pages cited here gives one.
What a caller sees
The September 29 entry describes two changes for 2026-09-01. The first is that aggregatedList methods “return partial results by default when a scope is unreachable.” The second is that “The returnPartialSuccess query parameter is no longer available in aggregatedList and list methods.” The blog describes the first as a default change: in /v1, AggregatedList “defaults returnPartialSuccess to false,” while in date-based versions “partial success is enabled by default.” The blog does not mention that the parameter is removed. It also says date-based versions use structured google.rpc.ErrorInfo error payloads and that new versions “allow Compute Engine to tighten overly broad legacy IAM permission checks and introduce safer configuration defaults.”
For 2026-10-01-preview, the release notes say “the quotas field is no longer available in responses from the projects.get, regions.get, and regions.list methods,” and point to the Cloud Quotas API for quota information. InfoQ says Google gives “no complete list of behavioral differences between /v1 and 2026-09-01 beyond the examples above.” The Herald found no cited page that says whether the release-notes entries are a complete list.
Tooling and a Python client check
The blog says each client-library release binds to a specific date-based version, that gcloud compute targets the bundled stable version while the new gcloud preview compute group targets the preview, and that the Terraform google provider targets stable versions while google-beta targets previews. The Google Cloud CLI release notes list under 588.0.0 (2026-10-06) that development of the alpha and beta Compute Engine release tracks was frozen, that “Existing commands in these release tracks remain supported and functional,” and that new preview features “will launch in gcloud preview compute going forward.”
For client libraries the blog says: “Upgrade your client library dependency as usual–no import path rewrites required.” The GitHub release page for google-cloud-compute 1.55.0, which carries a time attribute of 2026-10-01T16:02:52Z, lists “update Compute v1 API to version 2026-09-01” among its features. Under Bug Fixes it lists “all AggregatedList RPCs return_partial_success fields removed” and “remove several enums and fields that no longer exist in the API,” without naming the enums or fields.
The Herald compared the published Python packages for 1.54.0 and 1.55.0 itself. In its count, the types module contains return_partial_success in 199 request classes in 1.54.0 and in none in 1.55.0, and the package metadata file in 1.55.0 lists apiVersion 2026-09-01 where the 1.54.0 file has no apiVersion entry. The compute_v1 package name is unchanged in 1.55.0, which fits the blog’s statement about import paths. The Herald did not check the Go, Java, Node.js, C#, Ruby or PHP libraries.
Comparison with Azure and AWS
InfoQ says Google is “the last of the three largest cloud providers to let callers pin an API version on a request.” It also says Azure Resource Manager “has required a date-stamped api-version query parameter, with a -preview suffix for previews, since its REST API launched, while AWS keeps date-stamped service models inside its SDKs and does not expose version selection on a request.” Microsoft’s Azure REST API page says of Azure Resource Manager provider APIs and the classic deployment model: “Both require an api-version query-string parameter.” Its example requests use api-version=2014-04-01-preview and api-version=2016-02-01. AWS’s EC2 API reference lists a Version element of a Query request: “The API version to use. For the Amazon EC2 API, the version is 2016-11-15.” The cited pages do not say how that parameter relates to InfoQ’s statement about AWS, and the Herald did not examine AWS services other than EC2.
What the sources leave open
InfoQ says Google gives “no path by which a preview version becomes stable” and no statement on whether other Google Cloud APIs will adopt the scheme. The guide mentions “promoting” preview features to a stable release, but the Herald found no cited Google page that says how a preview version name relates to a later stable one, or what the next quarterly stable version will change.