Although APIs are incredibly powerful and underpin every other GCP interface, they can be cumbersome when it comes to manually interacting with cloud resources. For normal day-to-day operations and basic task automation, Google offers a set of command-line tools as part of the Google Cloud SDK. In addition to command-line tools, the Google Cloud SDK also includes tools to aid in local application development, including a local App Engine development server and emulators for cloud services, such as Pub/Sub, Datastore, and Bigtable.
The Google Cloud SDK comes preinstalled in the Cloud Shell, but there are oftentimes when having the SDK installed locally will provide a better developer experience. To install the Cloud SDK, visit https://cloud.google.com/sdk and follow the instructions for your operating system.
Previously, Google offered separate SDKs for each of the supported languages on App Engine. Google has consolidated many of these SDKs...