gcloud

gcloud provides a way to manage GCP resources, such as virtual machines, storage buckets, databases, and more, directly from your terminal. It’s part of the Google Cloud SDK (Software Development Kit), which includes other tools like gsutil for interacting with Google Storage.

The gcloud CLI allows you to automate tasks, script deployments, and manage GCP environments without needing a graphical user interface. You can use it to create, configure, update, and delete resources. It supports various authentication methods, including service accounts and user credentials.

For example, you might use gcloud compute instances create to launch a new virtual machine or gcloud storage buckets create to make a new bucket for storing data. It’s widely used by developers, DevOps engineers, and system administrators working with GCP.