Managing gcloud CLI components

Components are the installable parts of the Google Cloud CLI. A component can be a command-line tool (gcloud, bq, and gsutil), a set of gcloud CLI commands at the Alpha or Beta release levels, or a package that contains dependencies used by a tool in the gcloud CLI.

The most commonly-used components are installed by default. If you run a gcloud alpha or gcloud beta command interactively and the alpha or beta component is not installed, the gcloud CLI asks you whether you want to install it. An affirmative response installs the component and then runs the command. Other components are installed on-demand by the gcloud CLI when you run commands that require them.

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Default components

When you install the gcloud CLI, the following components are installed by default:

ID	Name	Description
gcloud	Default gcloud CLI commands	Tool for interacting with Google Cloud. Only commands at the General Availability and Preview release levels are installed with this component. You must separately install the gcloud alpha Commands and/or gcloud beta Commands components if you want to use commands at other release levels.
bq	BigQuery command-line tool	Tool for working with data in BigQuery
gsutil	Cloud Storage command-line tool	Tool for performing tasks related to Cloud Storage.
core	gcloud CLI core libraries	Libraries used internally by the gcloud CLI tools.

Alpha and beta components

The gcloud CLI provides two components that contain gcloud CLI alpha and beta commands. These components aren't installed by default, but you can install them manually at any time after the initial gcloud CLI installation. These components are:

ID	Name	Description
alpha	gcloud CLI alpha commands	gcloud CLI commands at the alpha release level.
beta	gcloud CLI beta commands	gcloud CLI commands at the beta release level.

gcloud CLI commands at the General Availability release level are part of the gcloud CLI component and are installed automatically when you install the gcloud CLI.

A list of all available additional components and external package managers, which aren't installed by default, appears below.

Managing gcloud CLI components

You can list, install, update, and remove gcloud CLI components to suit your needs.

Note: These instructions won't work if you have installed gcloud CLI using a package manager such as APT or yum because gcloud CLI component manager is disabled when using that method of installation. Use these packages instead.

Caution: When modifying your installation, the current directory of your terminal must be outside the google-cloud-cli directory of the gcloud CLI installation. On Windows, you will need to open your terminal as an Administrator if you have performed an All Users installation.

Listing components

To see a list of components that are available and currently installed, run gcloud components list:

gcloud components list

The following sample isn't a complete listing of all available components. To view the latest component offerings, update your gcloud CLI installation and then run gcloud components list.

Status	Component Name	ID	Size
Installed	App Engine Go Extensions	app-engine-go	97.7 MiB
Not Installed	AppCtl	appctl	21.0 MiB
Installed	Cloud Bigtable Command Line Tool	cbt	4.0 MiB
Installed	Cloud Bigtable Emulator	bigtable	3.8 MiB
Installed	Cloud Datalab Command Line Tool	datalab	< 1 MiB
Installed	Cloud Datastore Emulator	cloud-datastore-emulator	17.8 MiB
Not Installed	Cloud Datastore Emulator	cloud-firestore-emulator	60.4 MiB
Installed	Cloud Pub/Sub Emulator	pubsub-emulator	33.2 MiB
Installed	Cloud SQL Proxy	cloud-sql-proxy	7.6 MiB
Installed	Cloud Spanner Emulator	cloud-spanner-emulator	21.8 MiB
Installed	Google Cloud Build Local Builder	cloud-build-local	4.4 MiB
Installed	gcloud app Java Extensions	app-engine-java	118.9 MiB
Installed	gcloud app PHP Extensions	app-engine-php	21.9 MiB
Installed	gcloud app Python Extensions (Extra Libraries)	app-engine-python-extras	27.8 MiB
Installed	kubectl	kubectl	12.2 MiB
Installed	Cloud BigQuery Command Line Tool	bq	< 1 MiB
Installed	Cloud SDK Core Libraries	core	7.2 MiB
Installed	Cloud Storage Command Line Tool	gsutil	3.3 MiB
Installed	gcloud Alpha Commands	alpha	< 1 MiB
Installed	gcloud Beta Commands	beta	< 1 MiB
Installed	gcloud app Python Extensions	app-engine-python	6.1 MiB

Installing components

To install a component at the current version of your gcloud CLI installation, run gcloud components install:

gcloud components install [COMPONENT-ID]

The gcloud CLI installs the specified component.

For example, if you want to install the kubectl command:

gcloud components install kubectl

Updating components

Use the gcloud components update command to update all installed components to the latest available version of gcloud CLI:

gcloud components update

If you have an older version of the gcloud CLI installed, the gcloud CLI updates all the installed components.

If you need to revert to a previously known good version and installed the gcloud CLI directly (outside of a package manager, including using the interactive installer, static versions, Windows installer, or Homebrew), use gcloud components update to revert to the specified version:

gcloud components update --version VERSION

For downgrading versions of the gcloud CLI installed using a package manager, refer to these instructions for specifying versions when downloading using apt-get or yum.

Removing components

Use the gcloud components remove command to remove a specified component by its ID:

gcloud components remove [COMPONENT-ID]

You can re-install a component using the gcloud components install command at any time.

Additional components

Additional components that contain dependencies for gcloud CLI commands are also available in the gcloud CLI, but aren't installed by default. For an exhaustive list of components, run gcloud components list. Additional components that can be installed are marked with the status Not Installed.

External package managers

If you installed the gcloud CLI through the apt or yum package managers, you can also install additional gcloud CLI components using those same package managers. If your package manager cannot find these packages, read the installing with apt or installing with yum guides to learn how to configure https://packages.cloud.google.com/ as a package source.

gcloud CLI component	APT Package	YUM Package
app-engine-go	google-cloud-cli-app-engine-go	google-cloud-cli-app-engine-go
app-engine-java	google-cloud-cli-app-engine-java	google-cloud-cli-app-engine-java
app-engine-python	google-cloud-cli-app-engine-python	google-cloud-cli-app-engine-python
bigtable	google-cloud-cli-bigtable-emulator	google-cloud-cli-bigtable-emulator
cbt	google-cloud-cli-cbt	google-cloud-cli-cbt
cloud-build-local	google-cloud-cli-cloud-build-local	google-cloud-cli-cloud-build-local
datalab	google-cloud-cli-datalab	google-cloud-cli-datalab
docker-credential-gcr	Not yet available.	Not yet available.
gcd-emulator	google-cloud-cli-datastore-emulator	google-cloud-cli-datastore-emulator
kubectl	kubectl	kubectl
pubsub-emulator	google-cloud-cli-pubsub-emulator	google-cloud-cli-pubsub-emulator