How do I 'git push' from a local machine to a Google Cloud Platform instance?

Question

The documentation for Google Cloud Platform describes a number of ways of transferring files to Google Compute Engine instances. But it does not mention how to use Git to do this. Also, while I have Google Cloud code repositories available under "Development" in the Web console, it's not clear to he how to associate these with Compute instances.

How do I associate a Git repository with a Google Compute Engine instance and git push from my local machine to that the instance repo?

Answer 1

Since an SSH service is running on GCE Linux VMs by default, simply follow these steps:

1. On your local computer run gcloud auth login to authorize gcloud to access Google Cloud Platform.
2. Run gcloud compute config-ssh to populate SSH config files with Host entries from each instance.

3. Test SSHing to your VM instance by running ssh NAME.ZONE.PROJECT
   
   Example: ssh example-instance.us-central1-a.MY-PROJECT
   

4. Set up an empty repository on your VM:

   $ mkdir project.git
$ cd project.git
$ git init --bare
   
   

5. On your local computer add the remote repository:

git remote add origin NAME.ZONE.PROJECT:/<PATH>/project.git

Now you should be able to push your project to the Git repository on your VM.