A number of environment variables can be used to configure the behavior of the library. There are also functions to configure this behavior in code. The environment variables are convenient when troubleshooting problems.
Endpoint Overrides
GOOGLE_CLOUD_CPP_CLOUD_SHELL_SERVICE_ENDPOINT=... overrides the EndpointOption (which defaults to "cloudshell.googleapis.com") used by MakeCloudShellServiceConnection().
GOOGLE_CLOUD_CPP_ENABLE_TRACING=rpc: turns on tracing for most gRPC calls. The library injects an additional Stub decorator that prints each gRPC request and response. Unless you have configured your own logging backend, you should also set GOOGLE_CLOUD_CPP_ENABLE_CLOG to produce any output on the program's console.
See Also
google::cloud::TracingComponentsOptionGOOGLE_CLOUD_CPP_TRACING_OPTIONS=...: modifies the behavior of gRPC tracing, including whether messages will be output on multiple lines, or whether string/bytes fields will be truncated.
See Also
google::cloud::GrpcTracingOptionsOptionGOOGLE_CLOUD_CPP_ENABLE_CLOG=yes: turns on logging in the library, basically the library always "logs" but the logging infrastructure has no backend to actually print anything until the application sets a backend or they set this environment variable.
[[["Easy to understand","easyToUnderstand","thumb-up"],["Solved my problem","solvedMyProblem","thumb-up"],["Other","otherUp","thumb-up"]],[["Missing the information I need","missingTheInformationINeed","thumb-down"],["Too complicated / too many steps","tooComplicatedTooManySteps","thumb-down"],["Out of date","outOfDate","thumb-down"],["Samples / code issue","samplesCodeIssue","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],["Last updated 2025-08-22 UTC."],[[["\u003cp\u003eThe latest version available is 2.37.0-rc, with numerous previous versions listed down to 2.11.0.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eEnvironment variables can be utilized to configure the library's behavior, particularly useful for troubleshooting.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003e\u003ccode\u003eGOOGLE_CLOUD_CPP_CLOUD_SHELL_SERVICE_ENDPOINT\u003c/code\u003e allows for overriding the default endpoint used by \u003ccode\u003eMakeCloudShellServiceConnection()\u003c/code\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eTracing for gRPC calls can be enabled via \u003ccode\u003eGOOGLE_CLOUD_CPP_ENABLE_TRACING\u003c/code\u003e, and logging output can be activated with \u003ccode\u003eGOOGLE_CLOUD_CPP_ENABLE_CLOG\u003c/code\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003e\u003ccode\u003eGOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT\u003c/code\u003e can be set to configure the GCP project for examples and tests, but it does not affect the library itself.\u003c/p\u003e\n"]]],[],null,[]]
