gcloud topic offline-help

NAME
gcloud topic offline-help - setting up gcloud command offline help
DESCRIPTION
There are many ways to access gcloud command help. Only the first requires online access:
  • Add the --help flag to any command. This will render a man style document in a terminal pager. The document is always up to date with the command because it is generated by collating help text from the command itself.
  • Use the gcloud beta interactive shell which has as-you-type help. Like --help, the interactive help documents are always up to date with the gcloud installation.
  • Generate HTML documents in a local directory and point your browser to the generated index.html for offline browsing. Hover over a navigation item to focus the menu, hover to the left to expand it again. More details on this below.
  • Generate and install man(1) style documents on a local host. More details on this below.

All of these methods have the same content, all generated from a Google Cloud CLI gcloud installation. The last two are user maintained and can become out of date. Either use them for one time offline access, or make them part of your Google Cloud CLI installation/update routine.

Generating offline HTML documents
To generate HTML documents for offline browsing: 
# Select an empty directory where the HTML and supporting *.css* and
# *.js* files will be generated.
HTML_DIR=<some-local-directory>
 
# Generate the HTML in $HTML_DIR.
# Should take ~1 min, 10 min or more on slower systems.
gcloud meta generate-help-docs --html-dir=$HTML_DIR

Then enter this URL in the browser address/search bar, where $HTML_DIR must be the actual path name of the directory: 

file://$HTML_DIR/index.html
Generating offline manpage documents
To generate man page documents for the man(1) command: 
# Select an empty directory where the man page files will be generated.
MANPAGE_DIR=<some-local-directory>
 
# Generate the man pages in $MANPAGE_DIR.
# Should take ~1 min, 10 min or more on slower systems.
gcloud meta generate-help-docs --manpage-dir=$MANPAGE_DIR
 
# Append $MANPAGE_DIR to the MANPATH environment variable:
export MANPATH=$MANPATH:$MANPAGE_dir

Then run the man command on gcloud manpages: 

man gcloud info
NOTES
These variants are also available: 
gcloud alpha topic offline-help
 
gcloud beta topic offline-help