gcloud-lite CLI Distribution

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%

Artifacts

• Runnable docker image — 93% smaller
• tgz tarball — 75% smaller

Running the Docker Image

$ 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

Running ghutil, bq and other utilities

$ 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

Downloading gcloud-lite .tgz release

$ 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

Verifying .tgz Release Signature

public-key.pub is found in this repo ARCHIVE & ARCHIVE.sig are included in each release Verified OK is expected for a good signature.

PUBLIC_KEY=public-key.pub
ARCHIVE=google-cloud-cli-487.0.0-linux-x86_64-lite.tar.gz
openssl dgst -verify "${PUBLIC_KEY}" \
    -signature "${ARCHIVE}.sig" \
    "${ARCHIVE}"
Verified OK

Benchmarks

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

Issues Filed to Address SDK Bloat

• GoogleCloudPlatform/gsutil#1732
• https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/324114897?pli=1
• https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/239207289

Acknowledgements

• Big thanks to @framegrace for developing the logic to strip unnecessary components