How to ignore files when running `gcloud app deploy`?

Question

When I run

gcloud app deploy app.yaml

which files actually get uploaded?

The project folder contains folders and files such as

Answer 1

EDIT Aug 2018: Google has since introduced .gcloudignore, which is now preferred, see dalanmiller's answer.

---

They're all uploaded, unless you use the skip_files instruction in app.yaml. Files with a dot like .git are ignored by default. If you want to add more, beware that you're overriding these defaults and almost certainly want to keep them around.

skip_files:
  - ^Makefile$
  - ^venv$
  # Defaults
  - ^(.*/)?#.*#$
  - ^(.*/)?.*~$
  - ^(.*/)?.*\.py[co]$
  - ^(.*/)?.*/RCS/.*$
  - ^(.*/)?\..*$

Note also that they are uploaded to different places if you use a static handler. Static files are sent to a CDN and are not available to your language run time (although there are ways around that, too).

Make sure to read the docs:

https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/standard/python/config/appref#skip_files