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How to create Artifact Registry Docker Repository using gcloud CLI

Artifact Registry is the evolution of Container Registry. It provides a single place for your organization to manage container images and language packages (such as Maven and npm).

In this tutorial, we will learn how to create a Docker repository in Google Cloud Artifact Registry using the gcloud command-line interface.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure you have the following:

  1. Google Cloud Project: A GCP project with billing enabled.
  2. gcloud CLI: The Google Cloud SDK installed and initialized.
    • To check if it's installed: gcloud --version
    • To initialize: gcloud init

Step 1: Enable the Artifact Registry API

First, you need to enable the Artifact Registry API for your project.

gcloud services enable artifactregistry.googleapis.com

Step 2: Create the Repository

Run the following command to create a new Docker repository:

gcloud artifacts repositories create my-docker-repo \
    --repository-format=docker \
    --location=us-central1 \
    --description="My Docker Repository"

Explanation of flags:

  • my-docker-repo: The name you want to give to your repository.
  • --repository-format=docker: Specifies that this repository will store Docker images.
  • --location: The region where the repository will be created (e.g., us-central1).
  • --description: A description for the repository (optional).

Step 3: Verify the Creation

To verify that your repository has been created successfully, list the repositories in the location:

gcloud artifacts repositories list --location=us-central1

You should see my-docker-repo in the output.

Step 4: Configure Docker Authentication

To push and pull images from this repository, you need to configure Docker to authenticate with Artifact Registry.

gcloud auth configure-docker us-central1-docker.pkg.dev

This command updates your Docker configuration to use gcloud as a credential helper for the specified region.

Conclusion

You have successfully created a Docker repository in Google Cloud Artifact Registry! You can now tag and push your Docker images to this repository using the standard docker push command.

Example push command structure: docker push us-central1-docker.pkg.dev/PROJECT-ID/my-docker-repo/IMAGE:TAG