Google Cloud CLI & SDK Setup

Google Cloud has a number of awesome services that make creating your projects much more robust. Google pioneered and open-sourced Kubernetes so their cloud service is an obvious choice for deploying Kubernetes as well as many other services.

Before we can do anything with GCloud, I recommend you setup the GCloud SDK. Which is why I wrote this post:

Login to cloud.google.com

If you have a gmail account, you do not need to sign up, just login with that gmail account.

Download Google Cloud CLI Package (gcloud)

Regardless of the system you're own, you'll need to download the Google Cloud CLI. You can follow the official insructions from google here.

Find your system version and download the best suited option. Most modern operating systems are 64-bit so download the correct 64 bit version of the gcloud SDK for your system.

For my computers, I downloaded:

On my Apple Silicon MacBook Pro: google-cloud-cli-417.0.1-darwin-arm.tar.gz
On my Apple Intel MacBook Pro: google-cloud-cli-417.0.1-darwin-x86_64.tar.gz
On my 64-bit Windows 10: google-cloud-cli-417.0.1-windows-x86_64.zip (I do not recommended downloading it with Python bundled. Download python from python.org instead.)

The version numbers you download here will likely be different then mine -- which is fine. We will be updating the Google Cloud CLI in a few steps anyway.

macOS/Linux CLI Installation

macOS and Linux users have a few more steps to run to install the Google Cloud CLI. It's possible that homebrew has a solution to install gcloud but I'm going to install directly from the source.

Open up Terminal or Command Line

bash

cd ~/Downloads
mv google-cloud-cli-417.0.1-darwin-arm.tar.gz ~/
cd ~/

Replace google-cloud-cli-417.0.1-darwin-arm.tar.gz with the version you downloaded

Unpack the tar file

bash

tar xopf google-cloud-cli-417.0.1-darwin-arm.tar.gz
rm google-cloud-cli-417.0.1-darwin-arm.tar.gz

Install gcloud on your PATH

bash

cd google-cloud-sdk
./install.sh

You should see:

Modify profile to update your $PATH and enable shell command 
completion?

Do you want to continue (Y/n)?

Type Y and hit return to continue. You definitely want this since it makes running glcoud as easy as typing gcloud anywhere in terminal. Now you should see:

The Google Cloud SDK installer will now prompt you to update an rc 
file to bring the Google Cloud CLIs into your environment.

Enter a path to an rc file to update, or leave blank to use 
[/Users/cfe/.zshrc]

Hit return to accept the default (this is what I recommend).

Windows Installation

Open up PowerShell's command line.

powershell

cd ~\Downloads
mv google-cloud-cli-417.0.1-windows-x86_64.zip ~\
cd ~\

Then you can use Expand-Archive to unpack the download. This might take a while.

powershell

Expand-Archive google-cloud-cli-417.0.1-windows-x86_64.zip .

Once done, remove the archive:

powershell

rm google-cloud-cli-417.0.1-windows-x86_64.zip

Now:

powershell

cd google-cloud-sdk
.\install.bat

You should see:

Welcome to the Google Cloud SDK!

To help improve the quality of this product, we collect anonymized usage data
and anonymized stacktraces when crashes are encountered; additional information
is available at <https://cloud.google.com/sdk/usage-statistics>. This data is
handled in accordance with our privacy policy
<https://policies.google.com/privacy>. You may choose to opt in this
collection now (by choosing 'Y' at the below prompt), or at any time in the
future by running the following command:

    gcloud config set disable_usage_reporting false

Do you want to help improve the Google Cloud SDK (y/N)?

Type y or N depending on your preference and press Enter to continue. Now you should see:

Update %PATH% to include Cloud SDK binaries? (Y/n)?  .
Please enter 'y' or 'n':

Type y and hit Enter to continue. You definitely want this since it makes running glcoud as easy as typing gcloud anywhere in powershell.

Update glcoud

On your command line (Terminal or PowerShell), you should be able to run gcloud now:

bash

gcloud --version

Let's update cloud:

gcloud components update

Windows users you might have to right click on Powershell and Run as Administrator to use this command for the first time.

Login to Google Cloud for gcloud

The following command will open a web browser and have you login to Google and accept that Google Cloud SDK wants to access your Google Account.

gcloud auth login

Create your first Google Cloud Project

If you have never opend Google Cloud before, you will need to create a new project. Here's how you can do that:

Go to cloud.google.com.
On the Navbar click Select a project
Click NEW PROJECT
Add a Project Name - You can always add new projects. I'll be using Serverless CFE. Take note of the Project ID (project-id), mine was auto generated as serverless-cfe. You'll use the project-id for your local gcloud setup.
(Optional) Select an Organization if you have one on your account.
Click Create
Open terminal / powershell and:

gcloud config set project serverless-cfe

Replace serverless-cfe with your project-id from step 4.

All Setup Up!

Now your local system should be able to use the enabled services you have in Google Cloud. You'll have to use the Google Cloud console from time to time to ensure services can/are running.