Google Cloud Shell is a shell environment for managing resources hosted on Google Cloud Platform. Cloud shell provides up to 5 GB of permanent user data storage, but the software virtual machine environment is ephemeral - the machine resets once the shell has been shut down for 20 minutes. In the process, you lose any locally installed software, unless you've installed it to your home directory.
kubectl is the default CLI tool for interacting with Kubernetes clusters. Cloud Shell comes with kubectl preinstalled
through the Google Cloud SDK, but the preinstalled version is quite old.
kubectl version
Client Version: version.Info{Major:"1", Minor:"10", GitVersion:"v1.10.7", GitCommit:"0c38c362511b20a098d7cd855f1314dad92c2780", GitTreeState:"clean", BuildDate:"2
018-08-20T10:09:03Z", GoVersion:"go1.9.3", Compiler:"gc", Platform:"linux/amd64"}
The current version of K8S is 1.13, so this can create problems with newer clusters; compatibility is only guaranteed when K8S components are within one minor version of each other. (https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/tools/install-kubectl/#before-you-begin)
These instructions are based on the
instructions
for installing the kubectl Linux binary with cURL. First, open Cloud Shell and download the latest binary to your home
directory.
curl -LO https://storage.googleapis.com/kubernetes-release/release/$(curl -s https://storage.googleapis.com/kubernetes-release/release/stable.txt)/bin/linux/amd64/kubectl
Make the binary executable.
chmod +x ./kubectl
The next step in the basic instructions won't work beyond a single Cloud Shell session - /usr/local/bin/ resets with
the Cloud Shell VM. However, cloud shell lets us install in our home directory in ~/bin/. From your home directory,
create ~/bin/:
mkdir bin
(Note that ~/bin/ will not be added to $PATH until we restart.)
Move the kubectl binary.
mv kubectl bin/
Now, reboot Cloud Shell and determine your kubectl version.
kubectl version
Client Version: version.Info{Major:"1", Minor:"13", GitVersion:"v1.13.1", GitCommit:"eec55b9ba98609a46fee712359c7b5b365bdd920", GitTreeState:"clean", BuildDate:"2
018-12-13T10:39:04Z", GoVersion:"go1.11.2", Compiler:"gc", Platform:"linux/amd64"}
You can install a particular version of kubectl rather than the latest by using cURL to download a specific binary
as shown here.
You can also switch between versions on the fly by placing a link in ~/bin/ pointing to the desired version.