Google Cloud Command Line Interface (gcloud CLI)

Google Cloud CLI supports over 8,000 commands to provide complete management and control over nearly all Google Cloud services and products. The CLI also provides preview command sets for early access to pre-release Google Cloud products.

To assist with your local software development, the gcloud CLI provides data emulators for Bigtable, Cloud Datastore, Firestore, Spanner, and Pub/Sub for local development, testing, and validation. These simulate the service back ends to help you write client-side code more efficiently.

The gcloud CLI is also bundled with specialized sub-tools for working with BigQuery (the bq CLI), Cloud Storage (the gsutil CLI), and Kubernetes Clusters (the kubectl CLI) to provide precise and deep control over those respective products.

With bq, run BigQuery queries and manipulate datasets, tables, and entities. With gsutil, manage Storage buckets and objects, and with kubectl, deploy and manage Kubernetes container clusters.

Supports Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows and is available across a breadth of package managers, OS installers, and as a Docker image. Alternatively, or in conjunction, you can simply launch a Cloud Shell session to access the preinstalled gcloud CLI directly in the web browser and without installing anything. 

For various serverless products, the gcloud CLI is the primary interface by which you upload code to run and generally support your development workflow. For example, for Cloud Function, you can use the CLI to describe or trigger a function, display its log entries, or deploy updates to it.

Use the help flag to access inline documentation or view quickstarts and how-to guides on the web. The CLI is also backed by detailed reference documentation. For some services such as Cloud Compute, the Cloud Console provides equivalent gcloud CLI commands so you can use a UI interface to build up complex command and flag combinations.