boto: EC2 instance get_attribute results in AttributeError: 'EC2Connection' object has no attribute 'describe_attribute'

Question

What steps will reproduce the problem?

1.attempt to get a running EBS-backed instance's kernel attribute with instance.get_attribute('kernel')

>>> import boto.ec2
>>> regions = boto.ec2.regions()
>>> regions
[RegionInfo:eu-west-1, RegionInfo:us-east-1, RegionInfo:us-west-1, RegionInfo:ap-southeast-1]
>>> usw = regions[2]
>>> conn = usw.connect()
>>> reservations = conn.get_all_instances()
>>> reservations
[Reservation:r-XXXXXXXX]
>>> r1 = reservations[0]
>>> for i in r1.instances: print i
...
Instance:i-XXXXXXXX
>>> instance = r1.instances[0]
>>> instance.get_attribute('kernel')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/site-packages/boto/ec2/instance.py", line 293, in get_attribute
    return self.connection.describe_attribute(self.id, attribute)
AttributeError: 'EC2Connection' object has no attribute 'describe_attribute'
>>> 

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?

expect to get the attribute, but instead get this error: AttributeError: 'EC2Connection' object has no attribute 'describe_attribute'

What version of the product are you using? On what operating system?

boto.Version == 2.0b3 on Mac OS X 10.5 (boto installed using pip)

Please provide any additional information below.

Code on github repo seems to also indicate that there's not a describe_attribute

https://github.com/boto/boto/blob/master/boto/ec2/connection.py

submitted issue: http://code.google.com/p/boto/issues/detail?id=487

Answer 1

Problem was promptly fixed by the developers!

https://github.com/boto/boto/commit/899ab55752d31af22f41168f92fe39553504d6fc

However at time of writing, it's still not on pypi (so pip install --upgrade) won't help - must git clone and install from there.