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Prerequisites

Required access

You need:

  • a non-production GKE cluster and permission to retrieve credentials;
  • cluster-admin permissions for Flux bootstrap;
  • permission to enable APIs, create an Artifact Registry repository, and manage IAM in the selected GCP project;
  • a GitHub personal account and a repository you can administer;
  • a GitHub token suitable for Flux bootstrap, kept only in an environment variable.

Required tools

for command in gcloud kubectl helm flux git; do
  command -v "$command" >/dev/null || echo "Missing: $command"
done

gcloud version
kubectl version --client
helm version
flux version --client
git --version

Use Helm 3.8 or newer for native OCI support. Install current stable releases through the official instructions for your operating system.

GCP prerequisites

gcloud auth list
gcloud config get-value project
gcloud services enable \
  container.googleapis.com \
  artifactregistry.googleapis.com \
  iamcredentials.googleapis.com \
  --project "$PROJECT_ID"

Note

API enablement and IAM changes can take several minutes to propagate. Diagnose the actual permission before repeatedly changing bindings.

Flux preflight

Run this only after connecting to the intended cluster:

flux check --pre

Do not proceed to bootstrap until every mandatory check passes.