what's the different between gcloud components tools and the original tools?

Question

As the gcloud components doc said, we can install some tools like: minikube, kubectl using the below command:

gcloud components install minikube

What's the difference between the tools(minikube, kubectl) installed by gcloud components install command and the original tools minikube?

Does gcloud sdk have any customization or restrictions on these tools?

Can I use the original minikube and kubectl(e.g. installed by brew install kubectl command) to replace the gcloud component tools?

Answer 1

As far as I know, the only difference is the package manager and how you installed the component. Cloud SDK pulls the external components based on the latest version of the SDK. As example, by updating to the latest SDK (as of now 315.0.0), you'll be able to install Minikube 1.14.0. Checking the version of this component will also display a commit version that you can check on the official repository.

If you need to work on a feature that is available on the latest version, then I suggest that you continue using Homebrew. However if not, and you want your components managed by Google, then installing it via Cloud SDK is also a good choice.