Custom GCP Cloud Shell image with Terraform and Helm

Mon 10 June 2019 | Last updated on Tue 06 December 2022

Inpatient people who just want the end-result, please go to: GitHub: GCP Cloud Shell image with Terraform and Helm

Cloud Shell is one of the convenient features of Google Cloud providing you with a secure CLI directly from the browser. The default image contains almost all the tools you could wish for, but in some cases you might need more. In this blog post, you will learn how to create a custom Docker image for Google Cloud Shell that includes the Helm client and Terraform.

At a high-level you have to do 2 things:

1. Create and publish a Docker image
2. Configure your custom image to be used in Cloud Shell

1. Create and Publish custom Cloud Shell Docker image

In this section we're going to create new Docker image that's based on the default Cloud Shell image and then publish created image to Google Cloud Container Registry.

1. Let's start by creating a new repo and setting the project ID where the Docker image should be published:

   mkdir gcp-cloud-shell-custom-image
   cd gcp-cloud-shell-custom-image
   GCP_PROJECT_ID=your-project-ID
   

2. Now with your file editor of choice create a file named Dockerfile with the following content:

   FROM gcr.io/cloudshell-images/cloudshell:latest
   
   ENV TERRAFORM_VERSION="0.11.10" \
       HELM_VERSION="v2.14.0"
   
   WORKDIR /tmp
   
   RUN curl https://releases.hashicorp.com/terraform/${TERRAFORM_VERSION}/terraform_${TERRAFORM_VERSION}_linux_amd64.zip > terraform_${TERRAFORM_VERSION}_linux_amd64.zip && \
       unzip terraform_${TERRAFORM_VERSION}_linux_amd64.zip -d /bin && \
       wget -q https://storage.googleapis.com/kubernetes-helm/helm-${HELM_VERSION}-linux-amd64.tar.gz -O - | tar -xzO linux-amd64/helm > /usr/local/bin/helm && \
       chmod +x /usr/local/bin/helm && \
       rm -f terraform_${TERRAFORM_VERSION}_linux_amd64.zip
   

3. Build the Docker image:
   docker build -t gcr.io/$GCP_PROJECT_ID/cloud-shell-image .

4. Push the Docker image to Google Cloud Container Registry:
   docker push gcr.io/$GCP_PROJECT_ID/cloud-shell-image:latest
   Note: You will need to configure Docker to authenticate with gcr by following the steps here.

2. Configure Cloud Shell Image to use the published image

1. Go to Cloud Shell Environment settings
2. Click on Edit
3. Click on "Select image from project"
4. In the Image URL field enter: gcr.io/$GCP_PROJECT_ID/cloud-shell-image:latest
5. Click "Save"

Now open a new Cloud Shell session and you should see that the new custom image is used.