Learn GCP / Command Line Interface

This documentation explains how to install and use the Google Cloud Command Line Interface (CLI).

• Introduction
• Installation (Windows)
• Configure Credentials

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Introduction

The Google Cloud Command Line Interface (CLI) can be run on the command line to automate tasks. This includes the gcloud and gutil commands. See:

• Cloud SDK
• Cloud SDK docs
• gcloud - manage Google Cloud resources
• gsutil - to interface with storage
• bq - query tool for BigQuery

Installation (Windows)

See the Install the Google Cloud CLI documentation. This requires downloading and running the GoogleCloudSDKInstaller.exe program.

Accept the defaults, including installing for a single user, which will install in C:\Users\user\AppData\Local\Google\Cloud SDK. The installation includes a bundled version of Python. The final setup dialog is as follows:

Google Cloud SDK Installation Complete (see full-size image)

The location of the software is as follows and is also added to the PATH, using Git Bash. Note the space in Cloud SDK folder, which can cause issues in scripts and must be escaped with quotes.

$ which gcloud
/c/Users/steve/AppData/Local/Google/Cloud SDK/google-cloud-sdk/bin/gcloud
$ which gsutil
/c/Users/steve/AppData/Local/Google/Cloud SDK/google-cloud-sdk/bin/gsutil

Configure Credentials

Credentials must be configured to allow command line tools to run without entering a password. See the "Setting Up Credentials to Access Protected Data" section in the Install gsutil documentation.

If credentials exist on another computer or a backup being transferred to a new computer, copy the user's .gutil folder and .boto file.