the Flask library breaks the App Engine environment on Windows, because (only on Windows) it expects a library (msvcrt) that is excluded from the App Engine environment: https://github.com/pallets/click/issues/594
That library is only used for command-line flask tools, which we aren't using anyway (and I think the workaround doesn't actually cause any loss in functionality). It definitely doesn't affect the production build, since that's not on windows.
the Flask library breaks the App Engine environment on Windows, because (only on Windows) it expects a library (msvcrt) that is excluded from the App Engine environment: https://github.com/pallets/click/issues/594
The workaround is to pretend that we are not, in fact, on a windows computer: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/25915164/django-1-7-on-app-engine-importerror-no-module-named-msvcrt https://github.com/gae-init/gae-init/pull/527
That library is only used for command-line flask tools, which we aren't using anyway (and I think the workaround doesn't actually cause any loss in functionality). It definitely doesn't affect the production build, since that's not on windows.