gcloud-app

name	gcloud-app
description	App Engine via gcloud (`gcloud app`). Manage your App Engine deployments — domain-mappings, firewall-rules, instances, logs, operations, regions, runtimes, services.

gcloud app — App Engine

Overview

App Engine is Google Cloud's fully managed, serverless platform for building and hosting web applications and APIs at scale. The gcloud app command group creates the per-project App Engine application, deploys code/configuration from app.yaml (and related config files), and manages services, versions, traffic splits, instances, domains, SSL certificates, and firewall rules. Reach for it when you want to deploy a web app without managing servers — App Engine supports both the Standard environment (language-specific runtimes that scale to zero) and the Flexible environment (Docker-based, running on Compute Engine VMs).

Quick reference — common workflows

1. Create the App Engine app and deploy for the first time

# Enable the App Engine Admin API (one-time per project)
gcloud services enable appengine.googleapis.com

# List available regions, then create the app (one-time, region is permanent)
gcloud app regions list
gcloud app create --region=us-central

# Deploy the default service from app.yaml in the current directory
gcloud app deploy

# Open the live app in a browser
gcloud app browse

2. Deploy a new version without sending it traffic

# Deploy a new version but keep traffic on the existing one
gcloud app deploy app.yaml --no-promote --version=v2

# Confirm the version is listed (and not yet serving)
gcloud app versions list --service=default

# When ready, migrate all traffic to v2 (automatically-scaled Standard versions)
gcloud app versions migrate v2 --service=default

3. Canary / traffic split between two versions

# Send 90% of traffic to v1 and 10% to v2, split by cookie
gcloud app services set-traffic default \
    --splits=v1=9,v2=1 \
    --split-by=cookie

# Inspect the current traffic allocation
gcloud app services describe default

# When confident, shift all traffic to v2
gcloud app services set-traffic default --splits=v2=1

4. List, stop, and delete old versions

# List every version across all services
gcloud app versions list

# List only versions currently receiving traffic
gcloud app versions list --hide-no-traffic

# Stop a version (manual-scaling services only)
gcloud app versions stop v1 --service=default

# Delete a version (it must not be receiving traffic)
gcloud app versions delete v1 --service=default

5. Read and tail logs

# Read the latest entries (default limit 200) across all log types
gcloud app logs read

# Read warning-or-higher entries for a specific service/version
gcloud app logs read --service=default --version=v2 --level=warning

# Stream live logs
gcloud app logs tail

# Stream only request logs (request_log for Standard, nginx.request for Flex)
gcloud app logs tail --service=default --logs=request_log

6. Debug a Flexible-environment instance over SSH

# Find the instance ID
gcloud app instances list --service=default --version=v2

# Enable debug mode (removes the instance from health checking, enables SSH)
gcloud app instances enable-debug --service=default --version=v2 i1

# SSH into the instance, or into the app container specifically
gcloud app instances ssh i1 --service=default --version=v2
gcloud app instances ssh i1 --service=default --version=v2 --container=gaeapp

# Re-enable health checking when finished
gcloud app instances disable-debug --service=default --version=v2 i1

Command groups

Group	Reference file	Commands	Description
app domain-mappings	domain-mappings.md	5	view and manage your App Engine domain mappings
app firewall-rules	firewall-rules.md	6	view and manage your App Engine firewall rules
app instances	instances.md	7	view and manage your App Engine instances
app logs	logs.md	2	manage your App Engine logs
app operations	operations.md	3	view and manage your App Engine operations
app regions	regions.md	1	view regional availability of App Engine runtime environments
app runtimes	runtimes.md	1	list runtimes available to Google App Engine
app services	services.md	6	view and manage your App Engine services
app ssl-certificates	ssl-certificates.md	5	view and manage your App Engine SSL certificates
app versions	versions.md	7	view and manage your App Engine versions

Top-level commands (browse, create, deploy, describe, open-console, update) are in _commands.md. A one-line index of all 49 GA commands is in index.md.

Common flags & tips

• App is one-per-project and region is permanent. gcloud app create --region=REGION runs once; the region cannot be changed afterward. Run gcloud app regions list first to see Standard/Flexible availability.
• Service / version targeting. Most version-, instance-, and log-related commands accept --service (-s) and --version (-v). The unnamed default service is literally default.
• Deploy traffic control. gcloud app deploy promotes by default; use --no-promote to deploy without shifting traffic, and --version=NAME to set a predictable version ID. --no-stop-previous-version keeps the old version running. Persist the no-promote default with gcloud config set app/promote_by_default false.
• Traffic splitting. gcloud app services set-traffic takes --splits=v1=9,v2=1 (relative weights) and --split-by=cookie|ip|random (default ip). Add --migrate to let the autoscaler ramp gradually.
• Version migration is Standard-only. gcloud app versions migrate works only for automatically-scaled Standard versions; start/stop only apply to manual-scaling services.
• Debug/SSH is Flexible-only. instances enable-debug, ssh, and scp work only on the Flexible environment; --container=gaeapp targets the app container, and --tunnel-through-iap routes through Identity-Aware Proxy.
• Ingress controls. Restrict who can reach a service with gcloud app services update default --ingress=internal-only (also all, internal-and-cloud-load-balancing).
• Useful --format / --filter. List commands support standard output formatting, e.g.:

  gcloud app versions list --format="json"
  gcloud app versions list \
      --filter="version.createTime.date('%Y-%m-%d', Z)>'2017-11-03'"
  gcloud app instances list --uri
  

• Deploy prerequisites. Beyond appengine.googleapis.com, gcloud app deploy uses Cloud Build and Cloud Storage to build and stage artifacts (cloudbuild.googleapis.com, storage.googleapis.com). The deployer also needs roles/iam.serviceAccountUser to act as the App Engine service account.

beta / alpha

• gcloud beta app migrate-to-run — beta-exclusive command group to migrate second-generation App Engine apps to Cloud Run.
• gcloud beta app gen-config — deprecated beta command that generates missing config files for a local source directory.
• gcloud alpha app exists for experimental features. The core GA commands above (deploy, services set-traffic, versions migrate, etc.) need no beta/alpha flags for standard workflows.

Official documentation

• App Engine product docs home — https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs — serverless web-app hosting platform overview (Standard and Flexible environments).
• gcloud app CLI reference — https://cloud.google.com/sdk/gcloud/reference/app — all 49 GA commands.
• Python 3 quickstart — https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/standard/python3/quickstart — create, deploy, and add persistence to a Flask app on Standard.
• Configuration files — https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/standard/configuration-files — app.yaml, cron.yaml, dispatch.yaml, index.yaml.
• Splitting traffic — https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/standard/splitting-traffic — IP, cookie, and random splitting for canary/blue-green deploys.
• IAM roles for App Engine — https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/standard/roles — admin, deployer, service admin, and viewer roles.
• gcloud beta app reference — https://cloud.google.com/sdk/gcloud/reference/beta/app — beta surface including migrate-to-run.