ProtoBuf compiles and generates Google.Protobuf.dll and Protoc.exe, and customizes the code generation rules

Article directory

• ProtoBuf
• • basic introduction
  • Import ProtoBuf locally
• Compile and get Google.Protobuf.dll
• Compile to get the Protoc.exe executable file
• • CMake compiles ProtoBuf into Visual Studio
  • • basic configuration
    • Resolve errors after Finish
    • • Error 1 and solution: googletest
      • Error 2 and solution: abseil-cpp
  • Visual Studio generates basic exe operations
  • Use Protoc.exe to compile Proto files into C# files
• Other errors during operation

ProtoBuf

Basic introduction

• Reference article

  https://fungusfox.gitee.io/protobuf second version/

• basic introduction

  Protocol buffers is an intermediate tool that can serialize (deserialize) custom structures into character streams (byte[]).

  Compared with Json, XML, and Binary, the serialization speed is faster and the memory usage is smaller, but the operation is relatively more troublesome.

  Due to the language support provided by the Proto tool, users can serialize and deserialize the same data structure in different languages.

• Purpose of this article

  Download the Protobuf open source library, compile and generate the dll (Google.Protobuf.dll) and application (protoc.exe) required for serialization and deserialization using the C# language

Import ProtoBuf locally

1. Open the open source address: click here

2. Click Release

   

3. Download zip

   

   

4. Local decompression

   

Compile to get Google.Protobuf.dll

1. Enter protobuf-25.0\protobuf-25.0\csharp\src

2. Open solution

   

3. Compile and generate

   

4. Will get the target dll

   

Compile to obtain the Protoc.exe executable file

CMake compiles ProtoBuf into Visual Studio

Basic configuration

1. Install CMake locally

   Click here

   

2. Open CMake, configure the ProtoBuf CMake project path and the visual studio solution path to be generated

   

3. Click Configure, configure the vs solution version to be generated, and click finish

   

Resolve errors after Finish

Error 1 and solution: googletest

• Error message

   Cannot find third_party/googletest directory that's needed to build tests.
    If you use git, make sure you have cloned submodules:
  git submodule update --init --recursive
    If instead you want to skip tests, run cmake with:
      cmake -Dprotobuf_BUILD_TESTS=OFF
  Call Stack (most recent call first):
    CMakeLists.txt:336 (include)
  

• How to solve

  • Edit the cmakelists.txt file in the root directory

    

  • Locate the protobuf_BUILD_TESTS option

    

  • Change ON to OFF

    

  • Click the File menu of CMake, delete the cache, and then regenerate it.

    

• illustrate

  The downloaded protobuf.zip package does not contain the googletest submodule, and cmakelist.txt is set to compile googletest. A simple method is to not compile googletest through macro settings.

Error 2 and solution: abseil-cpp

• Error message

  protobuf_ABSL_PROVIDER is "module" but ABSL_ROOT_DIR is wrong
  Call Stack (most recent call first):
    CMakeLists.txt:294 (include)
  CMake Error at third_party/utf8_range/CMakeLists.txt:31 (add_subdirectory):
    The source directory
      G:/workspace/0.TestProject/protobuf-25.0/protobuf-25.0/third_party/abseil-cpp
    does not contain a CMakeLists.txt file.
  

• How to solve

  • Cmd into the \protobuf-25.0\third_party folder

    

  • Enter the command (this machine needs to have Git)

    git clone https://github.com/abseil/abseil-cpp
    

    Clone abseil-cpp repository

    

  • Just regenerate it

• illustrate

  The CMake settings for compiling protobuf become an IDE (Visual studio) project. abseil-cpp is included in the list of CMake conversion target projects by default. However, the downloaded protobuf zip package does not include this warehouse, so you need to download this warehouse manually.

Basic operations for generating exe with Visual Studio

1. Open the generated visual studio project solution

   

2. Optional: Modify the csharp_reflection_class.cc file to generate cs code from the proto file according to your needs.

   

3. Generate protoc project

   

   Wait about 3 to 4 minutes

   

4. Debug/exe application will be generated in the current directory of the solution

   

Use Protoc.exe to compile Proto files into C# files

• Enter the protobuf-25.0\Visual studio\Debug folder

  Create a new user.proto file

  syntax = "proto3";//Indicate the proto version
   
  package protobuf;//package name
  
  message user {
    int32 userid = 1;
    string name = 2;
    repeated string schools = 3;
  }
  

  

• cmd.exe execute command

  protoc.exe user.proto --csharp_out=./
  

  

• View the generated c# file

  

  The red box corresponds to step 2: modify the csharp_reflection_class.cc file to generate cs code from the proto file according to needs

Other errors during operation

• Error message

  The .NET SDK version "7.0.202" specified by global.json cannot be found. Please check whether the specified version has been installed.
  

• How to solve

  • cmd enter dotnet –info

    

  • Open global.json in the protobuf folder

    

  • Change the version inside to 7.0.100

    

    Change to

    

    7.0.100 corresponds to cmd to check the dotnet version of this machine