Google's gcloud CLI distribution is bloated with unnecessary dependencies including a complete python3 installation and large anthos binary. This results in slower instance boot times, and costly storage & transfer fees
GCloud-Lite is a distribution of the CLI that strips these unnessary dependencies to reduce the size by > 75%
- Runnable docker image — 93% smaller
- tgz tarball — 75% smaller
$ docker pull us-west1-docker.pkg.dev/tonym-us/gcloud-lite/gcloud-lite
# re-use existing credentials with -v
$ docker run -v$HOME:/root us-west1-docker.pkg.dev/tonym-us/gcloud-lite/gcloud-lite compute instances list
$ docker run -v$HOME:/root --entrypoint ghutil us-west1-docker.pkg.dev/tonym-us/gcloud-lite/gcloud-lite ARGS
$ docker run -v$HOME:/root --entrypoint bq us-west1-docker.pkg.dev/tonym-us/gcloud-lite/gcloud-lite ARGS
$ curl -LO https://github.com/tonymet/gcloud-lite/releases/download/472.0.0/google-cloud-cli-472.0.0-linux-x86_64-lite.tar.gz
$ tar -zxf *gz
Tested on GCP Compute Instance e2-medium
| Image | Time | Improvement |
|---|---|---|
| google-cloud-cli | 1m29s | - |
| gcloud-lite | 12.6s | 86% |
# time docker pull us-west1-docker.pkg.dev/tonym-us/gcloud-lite/gcloud-lite
Using default tag: latest
latest: Pulling from tonym-us/gcloud-lite/gcloud-lite
Status: Downloaded newer image for us-west1-docker.pkg.dev/tonym-us/gcloud-lite/gcloud-lite:latest
us-west1-docker.pkg.dev/tonym-us/gcloud-lite/gcloud-lite:latest
real 0m12.620s
user 0m0.474s
sys 0m0.114s
# time docker pull gcr.io/google.com/cloudsdktool/google-cloud-cli:latest
latest: Pulling from google.com/cloudsdktool/google-cloud-cli
Status: Downloaded newer image for gcr.io/google.com/cloudsdktool/google-cloud-cli:latest
gcr.io/google.com/cloudsdktool/google-cloud-cli:latest
real 1m28.957s
user 0m1.130s
sys 0m0.189s
- GoogleCloudPlatform/gsutil#1732
- https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/324114897?pli=1
- https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/239207289
- Big thanks to @framegrace for developing the logic to strip unnecessary components