What does "gcloud builds submit ... " do?

Question

I would like to know what gcloud builds submit does. In my case I am running the GCloud run tutorial.

The official documentation states that it submits a build. This is not a particularly helpful piece of information.

Can someone provide some more context to this?

What is a build? An Image? A jar file? Where is this 'build' being submitted to?

What does 'submitting' mean? Does this 'submit' process push my 'build' over the network.

When I run gcloud builds submit it also seems to be creating a docker image. So this is also creating the build, and then it is submitting it ?!!??

Answer 1

There are several steps that's happening when you run the gcloud builds submit command:

• Compresses your application code, Dockerfile, and any other assets in the current directory as indicated by .;
• Uploads the files to a Cloud Storage bucket (there's a default bucket but you're free to specify a bucket on your build config);
• Initiates a build using the uploaded files as input;
• Tags the image using the provided name; and
• Pushes the built image to Container Registry.

On your case, a build is a docker container that is pushed/submitted into the Container Registry. Once it's submitted, you'll be able deploy that container on Cloud Run just as specified on the docs you've provided.