Deploy from source code

This page describes how to deploy new services and new revisions to Cloud Run directly from source code using a single gcloud CLI command, gcloud run deploy with the --source flag. For an example walkthrough of deploying a Hello World service, see Deploy from source quickstarts.

Behind the scenes, this command uses Google Cloud's buildpacks and Cloud Build to automatically build container images from your source code without having to install Docker on your machine or set up buildpacks or Cloud Build. That is, the single command described above does what would otherwise require the gcloud builds submit and the gcloud run deploy commands.

Note that source deployments use Artifact Registry to store built containers. If your project doesn't already have an Artifact Registry repository with the name cloud-run-source-deploy in the region you are deploying to, this feature automatically creates an Artifact Registry repository with the name cloud-run-source-deploy.

If a Dockerfile is present in the source code directory, the uploaded source code is built using that Dockerfile. If no Dockerfile is present in the source code directory, Google Cloud's buildpacks automatically detects the language you are using and fetches the dependencies of the code to make a production-ready container image, using a secure base image managed by Google. (Each time you deploy, any needed security fixes are automatically picked up from the base image.)

Supported languages

In addition to sources with a Dockerfile, deploying from source supports the following languages:

  • Go
  • Node.js
  • Python
  • Java
  • Kotlin
  • .NET
  • Ruby
  • PHP

Read more details about language versions supported by Google Cloud's buildpacks.

Limitations of this feature

  • Deploy from source uses Artifact Registry, so this feature is only available in regions supported by Artifact Registry.
  • Deploying from source using gcloud run deploy --source is a convenience feature, and does not allow full customization of the build. For more control, build the container image using Cloud Build, for example, using gcloud builds submit, and then deploy the container image using, for example, gcloud run deploy --image.
  • Deploying from source with Google Cloud's buildpacks sets the Last Modified Date of source files to Jan 1, 1980. This is the default behavior of buildpacks and is designed to support reproducible builds. Depending on your language framework, this can affect browser-side caching of static files. If your application is affected by this, Google recommends disabling etag and Last-Modified HTTP headers in your application.
  • Deploying from source with Google Cloud's buildpacks always uses gcr.io/buildpacks/builder:latest. If your preferred language or OS configuration is not available in latest, use a specific builder to create an application image using your preferred builder.

Before you start

  • Make sure you have set up a new project for Cloud Run as described in the setup page.
  • If you are under a domain restriction organization policy restricting unauthenticated invocations for your project, you will need to access your deployed service as described under Testing private services.

Permissions required to deploy

To deploy from source, you need permissions to build, store the built container image and deploy.

You must have ONE of the following:

Deploying

To deploy from source code:

  1. Change to your source directory. Note that the source directory doesn't require a Dockerfile, but if a Dockerfile is present it will be used.

  2. Build and deploy your application:

    gcloud run deploy SERVICE --source .

    Replace SERVICE with the name you want for your service.

    Respond to any prompts to install required APIs by responding y when prompted. You only need to do this once for a project. Respond to other prompts by supplying the platform and region, if you haven't set defaults for these as described in the setup page.

  3. Wait for the build and deploy to complete. When finished, a message similar to this one is displayed:

    Service [my-app] revision [my-app-00000-xxx] has been deployed and is serving 100 percent of traffic. Service URL: https://my-app-texampleq-uc.a.run.app

    Upon deployment, note that this service revision serves 100% of traffic.

Automating building from source

As a best practice for avoiding unversioned changes in local source, Google recommends that you automatically deploy when changes are pushed to your Git repository. To make this easier, you can connect and configure continuous deployment to your Cloud Run service. By connecting your GitHub repositories to Cloud Run, you can configure builds and deploy your repositories without writing Dockerfiles or build files.

To configure automated builds, set up automation as described in the continuous builds page, making sure you choose the option for building source with Buildpacks.

What's next

After you deploy a new service, you can do the following:

You can automate the builds and deployments of your Cloud Run services using Cloud Build Triggers: