README

This directory contains Python code Google is releasing as open source,
to demonstrate the Google Storage API and to provide a command line
tool for manipulating data in the system.

Contents:
  - gsutil is the command line tool
  - cloudreader contains an example Google App Engine app that accesses Google
    storage
  - both depend on the boto open source Python library, version 2.0b4 or
    later.  The boto repository is mapped into the gsutil svn tree using an
    svn:externals propset and is distributed with the gsutil tar ball.

The cloudreader app is explained in cloudreader/README.google.

Prerequisites:

Gsutil requires Python 2.6 or later.

To install gsutil take the following steps:

1. Pick a place where you want to install the software.  You can
   install the code wherever you prefer; for brevity the instructions below
   assume you want to install in $HOME/gsutil.

2. To install gsutil on Linux/Unix or MacOS, open a shell window, change
   directories to where you downloaded the gsutil.tar.gz file, and do this:
   % tar xfz gsutil.tar.gz -C $HOME

   Then add the following line to your $HOME/.bashrc shell initialization
   file:
       export PATH=${PATH}:$HOME/gsutil

   The next time you start a shell you should be able to run gsutil from
   the command line.

3. To install gsutil on Windows, install cygwin (http://www.cygwin.com/),
   with at least version 2.6.5 of Python. Once you have that, start a shell
   and follow the Linux instructions above for unpacking and installing gsutil.

4. The first time you try to run gsutil, it will detect that you have no
   configuration file containing your credentials, interactively prompt you,
   and create the file.  

   After this you can use the tool.  Running gsutil with with no arguments
   will print a help summary.

For more information on installing and using gsutil, see
<http://code.google.com/apis/storage/docs/gsutil.html>.