Using CLI tools offers automation options with easy-to-build scripts, which otherwise is not possible if you rely exclusively on the cloud provider’s web interface only. With gcloud CLI, you can create, modify and delete various types of Google Cloud resources like Google Compute Engine virtual machines, Google Cloud SQL instances, Google Kubernetes Engine clusters, Google Cloud DNS, and Google Cloud Deployment Manager. Further, it can be used to deploy App Engine applications, manage authentication to cloud resources, customize resource configuration, and various such administrative tasks. Google Cloud gives you the option to open a shell with gcloud CLI already available and configured to use with your cloud account. Click on the shell icon on the top right telling Activate Cloud Shell to access gcloud CLI from a web browser. This will open a shell window at the bottom. But if you want to use gcloud to manage your Google Cloud account directly from your system, you must install it first. In this article, we’ll be covering the installation of gcloud CLI on Windows, macOS, and Linux as part of the Google Cloud SDK setup.
Windows
Windows installation binaries are available to set up gcloud SDK, which includes gcloud CLI. You can download the latest package of Cloud SDK installer here. Or else you can open a PowerShell terminal and input the below commands to download the installer and launch it. Once launched, follow the on-screen wizard to finish the installation. Cloud SDK requires Python, and the dependencies are bundled with the installer. So you can use default options at every step of the installation wizard unless you have a specific requirement to change installation components or location etc. You’ll be finally prompted with options to create useful shortcuts and initialize gcloud to configure it to use it with your Google Cloud account. Simply follow on-screen instructions, which will launch a login screen using the default browser. Once logged in, the shell will ask you to select the default project and region to use with gcloud CLI. Once ready, you can run gcloud commands from Windows Command Prompt. Default SDK install doesn’t include some extra components like App Engine extensions, which you can separately install using Cloud SDK component manager. The components include by default with SDK are:
macOS
gcloud SDK requires Python to work and should be installed on your macOS for gcloud CLI to function. Modern macOS should include the required version of Python by default. There’s an option to use Cloud SDK bundled with Python 3 to install the required dependencies along with gcloud CLI. You can check the version of python on your macOS by opening a terminal and running python -V Then run uname -m and determine the machine hardware of your system. Based on your machine architecture, choose the right package to download. At the time of writing this article, gcloud 346.x version is available. You can then simply extract the compressed TAR archive to your preferred location, likely somewhere inside your home directory. To add the cloud SDK tools to your PATH and command completion for your shell, run the below script from the root of the extracted directory: Proceed to initialize the SDK using: Additional components can be installed for your cloud SDK using component manager.
RHEL/CentOS
On an RHEL/Fedora/CentOS-based system, you can install from the Google Cloud SDK’s yum repositories. It is available in package format for installation on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8, Fedora 33, and CentOS 7 and 8 systems. This package contains the gcloud, gcloud alpha, gcloud beta, gsutil, and bq commands only. It does not include kubectl or the App Engine extensions required to deploy an application using gcloud commands, which can be installed separately. To install using dnf utility, first, add the Cloud SDK repo by running below in a terminal: [google-cloud-sdk] name=Google Cloud SDK baseurl=https://packages.cloud.google.com/yum/repos/cloud-sdk-el7-x86_64 enabled=1 gpgcheck=1 repo_gpgcheck=0 gpgkey=https://packages.cloud.google.com/yum/doc/yum-key.gpg https://packages.cloud.google.com/yum/doc/rpm-package-key.gpg EOM Then install the Cloud SDK using: Below are the additional components of Cloud SDK that can be optionally installed based on need:
google-cloud-sdk-app-engine-pythongoogle-cloud-sdk-app-engine-python-extrasgoogle-cloud-sdk-app-engine-javagoogle-cloud-sdk-app-engine-gogoogle-cloud-sdk-bigtable-emulatorgoogle-cloud-sdk-cbtgoogle-cloud-sdk-cloud-build-localgoogle-cloud-sdk-datalabgoogle-cloud-sdk-datastore-emulatorgoogle-cloud-sdk-firestore-emulatorgoogle-cloud-sdk-pubsub-emulatorkubectl
As an example, to install google-cloud-sdk-app-engine-java, use: To initialize and configure gcloud with your Google Cloud account, run the below command and follow the instructions:
Debian/Ubuntu
Similarly, for Debian and Ubuntu-based systems, Cloud SDK is available in package format as well. Again, this package contains the gcloud, gcloud alpha, gcloud beta, gsutil, and bq commands only. It does not include kubectl or the App Engine extensions required to deploy an application using gcloud commands. If you want these components, you must install them separately. As a prerequisite for Debian/Ubuntu installations, ensure that the Ubuntu release you’re on has not reached end-of-life. If you’re on Debian, make sure you’re on Debian’s stable release from Wheezy forward. To proceed with Cloud SDK installation, first, add the distribution URI as a package source: Make sure you’ve the below packages installed: Import the Google Cloud public key: Finally, update and install the Cloud SDK: Any of the below components can be optionally installed over and above the base Cloud SDK setup:
google-cloud-sdk-app-engine-pythongoogle-cloud-sdk-app-engine-python-extrasgoogle-cloud-sdk-app-engine-javagoogle-cloud-sdk-app-engine-gogoogle-cloud-sdk-bigtable-emulatorgoogle-cloud-sdk-cbtgoogle-cloud-sdk-cloud-build-localgoogle-cloud-sdk-datalabgoogle-cloud-sdk-datastore-emulatorgoogle-cloud-sdk-firestore-emulatorgoogle-cloud-sdk-pubsub-emulatorkubectl
To do that, install the required component using below apt-get command: Now you’re ready to initialize gcloud using: Follow the on-screen instructions to connect your Google Cloud account and configure the default options.
Summary
Like AWS CLI, Google Cloud offers a CLI tool to manage the Google Cloud infrastructure. This helps in doing some repetitive tasks faster and offers an opportunity to write scripts and automation tools, paving the way towards Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC). To learn more about the Google Cloud CLI tool, i.e., gcloud, refer to its documentation page and cheat sheet. Learn how to check and clear the ARP cache in Windows, Linux and Mac.
title: “What Is Gcloud And How To Install On Windows Macos And Linux " ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-01” author: “Ken Sippel”
Imagine you want to view your GCP resources, provision an infrastructure without login to Google Cloud Console. gcloud can help in many ways.
What is gcloud?
gcloud is the desktop command-line tool for Google Cloud Platform. You can literally do everything with gcloud that you do on the cloud console. To take a look at a quick introduction, there is a list of the most used commands with a glimpse of their structured, execute gcloud cheat-sheet or see the official cheat sheet. You can do manage many things, like below.
Compute Engine (VMs)Cloud DNSKubernetes EngineCloud SQLCloud DataprocCloud DeploymentDeploying App Engine applicationsManage authenticationCustomize the local configuration
and a lot more… gcloud is a cross-platform SDK that you can install on your favorite OS like Windows, macOS, Linux, etc.
Installing gcloud on Linux
Python is a prerequisite to install gcloud so ensure you have installed that on your computer or server. You can refer to this Python installation guide if you need to install it.
Depending on your OS, you can download the package between 32-bit or 64-bit from the official download page.
Example for 64-bit and, for 32-bit
Unzip the downloaded file which will create a new folder called google-cloud-sdkRun the install.sh file
Restart the terminal to enable the changes to take effect.Let’s initialize the gcloud SDK by running the below command.
Installing gcloud on Windows
As usual, things are much easier in Windows, simply download the Cloud SDK installer for Windows and execute it. Or if you prefer the terminal methods, open the PowerShell terminal (not the CMD), and execute these PowerShell commands: 2- The installer, signed by Google LLC, will prompt for next steps, follow them. Optionally, you may like to enable screen reader mode for a more streamlined screen reader experience, check the Turn on screen reader mode option. For more information about the Cloud SDK screen reader experience, open the Accessibility features guide. 3- As the Cloud SDK needs Python, you must install it and every other necessary dependency. The supported versions are Python 3 (preferred, 3.5 to 3.8) and Python 2 (2.7.9 or higher). That means you can use an existing Python installation, despite SDK currently uses Python 3 by default. This can be done by unchecking the option to Install Bundled Python. 4- Now, when the installation has been done, it gives you some options to choose from: Make sure to select these:
Start Google Cloud SDK ShellRun gcloud init
Now an SDK terminal window will appear and execute the gcloud init command automatically. 5- This installation is the default, therefore; it doesn’t contain the App Engine extensions needed to deploy an application using gcloud commands. You can install these components in the Cloud SDK component manager. Troubleshooting:
If you face installation failure because the find command was not recognized, make sure that your PATH environment variable is on the setting of include the folder containing find. It supposed to be: C:\WINDOWS\system32;.If you already just uninstalled Cloud SDK, you must restart your computer in order to install a new Cloud SDK.
For macOS
1- As with any other OS, for macOS, you also need Python for SDK. The supported versions are Python 3 (preferred, 3.5 to 3.8) and Python 2 (2.7.9 or higher). Furthermore, you can choose the macOS 64-bit with packed Python installation. Execute the following to check the current Python version: If you need more information about choosing and configuring your Python interpreter, visit gcloud topic startup. 2- There are four packages, choose to download what suit your OS from the following: Execute uname -m from your command line to determine the suitable machine hardware name. 3- Now unzip the file in any path you want in your file system, it’s recommended at your home directory. To do this on macOS, just open the downloaded .tar.gz archive file in the location you want. If you would like to replace an existing installation, remove the existing google-cloud-sdk directory and extract the archive to the same location. If you already have an existing installation, and you want to replace it, simply delete the old google-cloud-sdk directory and then extract the new package in the same location. 4- Optionally, you can use the install script to install additional Cloud SDK tools in the same PATH. Also, if you wish, you can contribute to command-completion for usage statistics collection and command-completion for your shell. Execute this script from the exact root of the folder that extracted the SDK: You can do it also non-interactively using a script or by providing preferences as flags, by executing this command: To execute the install script with screen reader mode on: Now restart the terminal to enable the changes to take effect. 6- To initialize the SDK, execute gcloud init: Optional:
Install additional SDK components from the component manager.Install the latest Google Cloud Client Libraries and libraries for supported languages.
Using Gcloud
The instruction above installs the default Cloud SDK components including gcloud, gsutil and bq command-line tools. To manage and use the installation after you have installed Cloud SDK, use commands in the gcloud components command group. Including viewing installed components, installing and removing components, and upgrading the Cloud SDK to a new version or even downgrading to a specific version. For installing additional components, use the gcloud components install command, or install the suitable deb or RPM packages.
Gcloud for Mobile
To use gcloud on a smart mobile phone, install the Google Cloud Console. For iPhone: Google Cloud Console| App Store. For Android: Google Cloud Console | Google play. Just open the shell black icon.
Conclusion
With these instructions, whatever your desire of using gcloud, in the browser, your computer, or simply in your smartphone. Whatever your operating system is, it’s clear that the whole process is quite easy to implement.
