Prerequisites

vmup keeps its own dependencies to a minimum — Terraform is downloaded automatically on first run, so there's really only one thing you need before installing.

1. Google Cloud SDK

The gcloud CLI is required for IAP SSH tunneling — vmup shells out to gcloud compute ssh --tunnel-through-iap to reach your instances.

After installing, authenticate:

gcloud auth login

vmup will also auto-detect your default project from gcloud config, so it helps to set one:

gcloud config set project YOUR_PROJECT_ID

Application Default Credentials

Some features (live cost estimates, batch instance queries) use the Google Cloud APIs directly. If you see authentication errors inside vmup, run gcloud auth application-default login. vmup will prompt you when this is needed.

That's it

You do not need to install:

• Terraform — vmup downloads its own pinned copy to ~/.vmup/bin/ on first run.
• Go — only needed if you want to build from source.

Next: install vmup.