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The gcloud command-line tool cheat sheet
A roster of go-to gcloud commands for the gcloud tool, Google Cloud's primary command-line tool.
(Also included: , , and a .)
Get going with the gcloud command-line tool.
: Initialize, authorize, and configure the gcloud tool.
: Display version and installed components.
: Install specific components.
: Update your Cloud SDK to the latest version.
: Set a default Google Cloud project to work on.
: Display current gcloud tool environment details.
Cloud SDK is happy to help.
Make the Cloud SDK your own; personalize your configuration with properties.
Grant and revoke authorization to Cloud SDK
Manage project access policies
Configuring Cloud Identity & Access Management (IAM) preferences and service accounts
Manage containerized applications on Kubernetes
Create, run, and manage VMs on Google infrastructure
Build highly scalable applications on a fully managed serverless platform
Commands that might come in handy
A quick primer for getting started with the gcloud command-line tool.
Arguments can be Positional args or Flags
Positional args: Set after command name; must respect order of positional args.
Flags: Set after positional args; order of flags doesn't matter.
A flag can be either a:
Name-value pair (--foo=bar), or
Boolean (--force/no-force).
Additionally, flags can either be:
Required
Optional: in which case, the default value is used, if the flag is not defined
Some flags are available throughout the gcloud command-line tool experience, like:
For Compute Engine instances with prefix us and not machine type f1-micro:
For a list of projects created on or after 15 January 2018, sorted from oldest to newest, presented as a table with project number, project id and creation time columns with dates and times in local timezone:
For a list of ten Compute Engine instances with a label my-label (of any value):
The underlying patterns for gcloud commands; to aid self-discovery of commands.
The gcloud command-line tool is a tree; non-leaf nodes are command groups and leaf nodes are commands. (Also, tab completion works for commands and resources!)
Most gcloud commands follow the following format:
For example: gcloud + compute + instances + create + example-instance-1 + --zone=us-central1-a
Release level
Release Level refers to the command's release status.
Example: alpha for alpha commands, beta for beta commands, no release level needed for GA commands.
Component
Component refers to the different Google Cloud services.
Example: compute for Compute Engine, app for App Engine, etc.
Entity
Entity refers to the plural form of an element or collection of elements under a component.
Example: disks, firewalls, images, instances, regions, zones for compute
Operation
Operation refers to the imperative verb form of the operation to be performed on the entity.
Example: Common operations are describe, list, create/update, delete/clear, import, export, copy, remove, add, reset, restart, restore, run, and deploy.
Positional args
Positional args refer to the required, order-specific arguments needed to execute the command.
Example: <INSTANCE_NAMES> is the required positional argument for gcloud compute instances create.
Flags
Flags refer to the additional arguments, --flag-name(=value), passed in to the command after positional args.
Example: --machine-type=<MACHINE_TYPE> and --preemptible are optional flags for gcloud compute instances create.
: Search the gcloud tool reference documents for specific terms.
: Provide feedback for the Cloud SDK team.
: Supplementary help material for non-command topics like accessibility, filtering, and formatting.
: Define a property (like compute/zone) for the current configuration.
: Fetch value of a Cloud SDK property.
: Display all the properties for the current configuration.
: Create a new named configuration.
: Display a list of all available configurations.
: Switch to an existing named configuration.
: Authorize Google Cloud access for the gcloud tool with Google user credentials and set current account as active.
: Like gcloud auth login but with service account credentials.
: List all credentialed accounts.
: Display the current account's access token.
: Remove access credentials for an account.
: Display metadata for a project (including its ID).
: Add an IAM policy binding to a specified project.
: List IAM grantable roles for a resource.
: Create a custom role for a project or org.
: Create a service account for a project.
: Add an IAM policy binding to a service account.
: Replace existing IAM policy binding.
: List a service account's keys.
: Register the gcloud tool as a Docker credential helper.
: Create a cluster to run GKE containers.
: List clusters for running GKE containers.
: Update kubeconfig to get kubectl to use a GKE cluster.
: List tag and digest metadata for a container image.
: List Compute Engine zones.
: Display a VM instance's details.
: List all VM instances in a project.
: Create snapshot of persistent disks.
: Display a snapshot's details.
: Delete a snapshot.
: Connect to a VM instance by using SSH.
: Deploy your app's code and configuration to the App Engine server.
: List all versions of all services deployed to the App Engine server.
: Open the current app in a web browser.
: Create an App Engine app within your current project.
: Display the latest App Engine app logs.
: Decrypt ciphertext (to a plaintext file) using a Cloud Key Management Service (Cloud KMS) key.
: List your project's logs.
: Display info about a Cloud SQL instance backup.
: Export data from a Cloud SQL instance to a SQL file.
Install the Cloud SDK with these .
: For when in doubt; display detailed help for a command.
: If using a project other than the current one.
: Disabling interactive prompting (and applying default values for inputs).
: Can set verbosity levels at debug, info, warning, error, critical, and none.
: Display gcloud version information.
: Set output format as config, csv, default, diff, disable, flattened, get, json, list, multi, none, object, table, text, value, or yaml.
Extricate the most from your output with the , , limit, and sort-by flags.
