gcloud_topic_startup (1)

NAME

gcloud topic startup - supplementary help for gcloud startup options

DESCRIPTION

Choosing a Python Interpreter

The gcloud CLI runs under Python. On Windows, you have the option of installing a bundled Python interpreter, but on Mac and Linux you must have a Python interpreter available somewhere on your system. gcloud will attempt to locate an interpreter on your system PATH by looking for the following binaries (in this order):

*

python2

*

python27

*

python

*

python3

Currently gcloud requires Python version 2.7.x and there is experimental support for 3.4 and up.
Other Python tools shipped in the Cloud SDK do not yet support Python 3, including:

*

dev_appserver

*

gsutil

*

bq

*

datalab

If you have multiple Python interpreters available or if you don't have one on your PATH, you can specify which interpreter to use by setting the CLOUDSDK_PYTHON environment variable. For example:

# Use the python3 interpreter on your path $ export CLOUDSDK_PYTHON=python3

# Use a python you have installed in a special location $ export CLOUDSDK_PYTHON=/usr/local/my-custom-python-install/python

Configuring the Python Interpreter

While not typically necessary, you are able to pass interpreter level arguments to the Python running gcloud via the CLOUDSDK_PYTHON_ARGS environment variable.
A common use case for this (which has been special-cased) is to enable 'site packages'. This allows Python to pick up libraries from the system ( for example, those that may have been installed with pip). Site packages may be necessary if you require certain native libraries (as is the case if you work with service accounts using a legacy .p12 key, for example). To enable site packages, set CLOUDSDK_PYTHON_SITEPACKAGES=1. Note that enabling site packages may cause conflicts with gcloud packaged libraries, depending on what you have installed on your system.

Setting Configurations and Properties

Your active configuration can also be set via the environment variable CLOUDSDK_ACTIVE_CONFIG_NAME. This allows you to specify a certain configuration in a given terminal session without changing the global default configuration.
In addition to being able to set them via gcloud config set, each gcloud property has a corresponding environment variable. They take the form: CLOUDSDK_SECTION_PROPERTY. For example, if you wanted to change your active project for just one terminal you could run:

$ export CLOUDSDK_CORE_PROJECT=my-project

For more information, see gcloud topic configurations.