gcloud topic cli-trees

NAME
gcloud topic cli-trees - CLI trees supplementary help
DESCRIPTION
CLI trees are static nested dictionaries that describe all of the groups,commands, flags, positionals, help text, and completer module paths for a CLI. ACLI tree is often much faster to load and access than one generated at runtimefrom an active CLI. It is also a more compact representation. A properly formedCLI tree can be used to reproduce the help documentation for an entire CLI.
CLI Tree Data Files
A CLI tree is a dictionary in a JSON file. By convention, the file base name isthe corresponding CLI name. For example, the CLI tree file name forgcloud isgcloud.json.

CLI trees associated with Google Cloud CLI modules are installed in thedata/cli subdirectory of the Google Cloud CLI installation root:

$(gcloudinfo--format="value(installation.sdk_root)")/data/cli

This includes tree data forgcloud (core component),bq,gsutil, andkubectl. Note that thetree data is installed with the component. If the component is not installedthen neither is its CLI tree. An installed component does not require its CLItree to run. Only thegcloudCLI tree is required by$gcloud alphainteractive.

By default, CLI trees for other commands are JSON files generated on demand fromtheirman(1) orman7.org man pages. They are cached inthecli subdirectory of the global config directory:

$(gcloudinfo--format="value(config.paths.global_config_dir)")/cli
The gcloud CLI Tree
Thegcloud CLI tree is used forstatic TAB completion, the corpus for$gcloud alpha help-search, and thedata source for$gcloudalpha interactive completions and help text generation.
Other CLI Trees
$gcloud alphainteractive uses CLI tree data files for typeahead, command linecompletion and active help. A few CLI trees are installed with their respectiveGoogle Cloud CLI components:gcloud (core component),bq,gsutil, andkubectl.

The generated trees are a close approximation. You can construct your own,especially for hierarchical CLIs likegit(1) that are hard toextract from man pages.

CLI Tree Schema
TBD (gcloud interactive is still in ALPHA).
NOTES
These variants are also available:
gcloudalphatopiccli-trees
gcloudbetatopiccli-trees

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Last updated 2025-07-22 UTC.