file https://github.com/googleapis/google-auth-library-python/blob/master/google/auth/environment_vars.py contains `GCE_METADATA_ROOT` added in: https://github.com/googleapis/google-auth-library-python/commit/b33b8021117db0d9ef80988cc7bb8ad58ecccf18 Client libs for other languages call it GCE_METADATA_HOST: go: https://github.com/googleapis/google-cloud-go/blob/master/compute/metadata/metadata.go java: https://github.com/googleapis/google-auth-library-java/blob/master/oauth2_http/java/com/google/auth/oauth2/ComputeEngineCredentials.java ... Maybe consider supporting both names for a transition?