kubectl

A major driver for Google Cloud is the Google Kubernetes Engine. Although Kubernetes was created by Google, it now belongs to the larger ecosystem as a part of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. The kubectl is the official command-line tool for interacting with Kubernetes. For developer's convenience, the Google Cloud SDK is capable of installing and managing kubectl. We'll be working more with kubectl in Chapter 5, Google Kubernetes Engine.

These tools serve a specific Google Cloud product and operate somewhat independently from gcloud. Though the commands for these services live in separate tools, they do have some level of integration with the larger Google Cloud SDK. For instance, some configuration properties set in gcloud will take effect in these other tools. Also, because these tools are installed as SDK components, they can be updated with the usual gcloud components update command.