Why was `gcloud auth login` flag `--no-launch-browser` deprecated?

[Max Kukartsev]

Hello Google Cloud Developers,

In February 2022 the --no-launch-browser flag to gcloud auth login was deprecated in favor of --no-browser [1]. This is somewhat of a breaking change since it requires a machine with both gcloud and a browser. Could anyone please clarify what prompted this change? Was there anything wrong with --no-launch-browser?

For login with --no-launch-browser, you need gcloud on one machine and a web browser on another machine. You get an OAuth URL, open it in a browser, and paste the code back into gcloud.

With --no-browser, however, you are given a gcloud command to run on another machine which has a browser. But then that other machine needs both gcloud and a browser, which was not a requirement for --no-launch-browser.

Thank you,

Max

References

1. https://github.com/Flank/gcloud_cli/blob/0f7c05497ad563f8d2438d83ce1398adea998c4e/google-cloud-sdk/RELEASE_NOTES#L619-L626

[Horace (Cloud Platform Support)]

Hello,

Apologies for any inconvenience this might have caused. Google is constantly making ways to make validation more secure. However, kindly take a look and comment at [1] as the same issue has been raised. Kindly comment on the public issue tracker to indicate that you are also affected.

[1] https://issuetracker.google.com/224754679