/cc @dhermes

Ideally, the way this would work is:

$ pip install gcloud  # This should work even if I don't have gRPC
$ python
>>> from gcloud import bigtable
Exception: Bigtable requires that you have gRPC installed.
  Follow the instructions here: http://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/gcloud-python/docs/install-grpc.md

Instructions would say something like:

First, install gRPC core.

• For Debian, ...
• For Ubuntu, ...
• For Mac, ...
• For Windows, ...
• For some other OS, ...

After that, you need the Python gRPC package:

$ pip install grpc

Once that's done, you should be able to run from gcloud import bigtable :)

If you're still having problems, try running python -m gcloud.check_grpc to diagnose the issue.

The check_grpc script would give us info on the user's set-up so we can help figure out what's broken...

$ pip install gcloud
$ python -m gcloud.check_grpc
Python: [details about Python]
Platform: [some details about the platform]
gcloud-python: [...]
libssl: [...]
gRPC core: [...]
gRPC Python package: [...]

Stuff we still need to do:

• Write gRPC installation instructions (or include ones from the gRPC repo) specific to gcloud-python
• Travis needs to be able to run our system tests (requires gRPC on the test server)