title: how can I change my app-id in GAE and still access the same permanent datastore?
body: <p>I am developing an app locally in Google App Engine.  I have built a small datastore for development purposes.  Rebuilding it after every power cycle on my Mac got tedious so I made it permanent.  Now I run my app locally with the following command:</p>
  
  <pre><code>/usr/local/bin/dev_appserver.py "--datastore_path=./permanent.datastore" appengine_prototype
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Life is good.  I have decided to deploy my app so I can test http post commands from a different machine.  When I tried to register my current application id (example), I found that it was unavailable (shocker!).  So I registered a different application id and planned to change my local application id to match.  However, when I changed the </p>
  
  <pre><code>application: *app-id* 
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>line in my app.yaml file, my app stopped recognizing my permanent datastore.</p>
  
  <p>So, how can I change my application id to the one I registered, maintain the connection to the permanent datastore and then push the whole shebang online?  I tried running the app twice locally, first with the permanent datastore referenced in the command and then without, hoping that the default temporary datastore would inherit from the previous permanent datastore.  That didn't work.  Do I need to start by copying the permanent datastore to the default temporary datastore?  How would I do that?  Any help would be much appreciated.</p>
  
  <p>Thanks,</p>
  
  <p>Dessie</p>