Managing your Google Cloud SDK

The Google Cloud SDK is modular in design and contains several independent components built for specific applications. This modular approach allows components to be independently installed and removed. Components are managed using the included gcloud CLI, making it possible to install and update components within the same tool. To list the SDK components, run gcloud components list. This will show all known components and indicate whether they are installed and up to date. Note that gcloud will also periodically notify users when an update is available as part of the output of running any command. This behavior is disabled in the Cloud Shell as the Google Cloud SDK exists outside of the $HOME directory and will be regularly destroyed and updated between sessions.

By default, the Cloud SDK ships with a very few components installed. The default components include gcloud, bq, and gsutil, which are often all you will need for basic interactions with Google Cloud. On the other hand, Google Cloud Shell comes preinstalled with most of these components (as seen here in the earlier screenshot). Components can be installed or removed on an individual basis at any time with gcloud components <install|remove> <COMPONENT_ID>.