How can I exclude a file from deploy in gcloud?

There is skip_files directive in your app.yaml to exclude paths or files you do not want deployed.

But If you are working on a node.js project you would have to use .gcloudignore file which will specify which directories to exclude.

This .gcloudignore would prevent the upload of the node_modules/ directory and any files ending in ~:

  node_modules/
  *~

Reference to documentation:
1. https://cloud.google.com/sdk/gcloud/reference/topic/gcloudignore
2. https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/standard/nodejs/config/appref (search 'skip_files')

In this case, a .gcloudignore file would help by preventing the upload of any file or directory. The syntax is the same as the .gitignore file.

First you could make sure gcloudignore is enabled:

gcloud config list

If it is not, then you may enable it:

gcloud config set gcloudignore/enabled true

Some gcloud commands like gcloud functions deploy may automatically generate a .gcloudignore file.

The .gcloudignore file must reside in the project root folder.

Here is the .gcloudignore that is automatically generated by the gcloud function deploy command:

# This file specifies files that are *not* uploaded to Google Cloud Platform
# using gcloud. It follows the same syntax as .gitignore, with the addition of
# "#!include" directives (which insert the entries of the given .gitignore-style
# file at that point).
#
# For more information, run:
#   $ gcloud topic gcloudignore
#
.gcloudignore
# If you would like to upload your .git directory, .gitignore file or files
# from your .gitignore file, remove the corresponding line
# below:
.git
.gitignore

node_modules

This worked fine for me with a NodeJS project with the following structure:

~/Workspace/my-project $ tree -a
.
├── .idea
│   ├── func-project.iml
│   ├── misc.xml
│   ├── modules.xml
│   ├── vcs.xml
│   └── workspace.xml
├── .gcloudignore
├── index.js
├── package-lock.json
└── package.json

In this case, without the .gcloudignore this is what is deployed:

And with the following .gcloudignore:

.gcloudignore
.git
.gitignore
.idea
node_modules
package-lock.json

This is what is deployed:

See more on this.

I believe you will want to use the skip_files directive in your app.yaml to exclude paths or files you do not want deployed.

Something like:

skip_files:
  - ^your_data_dir/.*\.json?