protobuf

Protocol Buffers - Google's data interchange format
===================================================

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Copyright 2008 Google LLC

Overview
--------

Protocol Buffers (a.k.a., protobuf) are Google's language-neutral,
platform-neutral, extensible mechanism for serializing structured data. You
can learn more about it in [protobuf's documentation](https://protobuf.dev).

This README file contains protobuf installation instructions. To install
protobuf, you need to install the protocol compiler (used to compile .proto
files) and the protobuf runtime for your chosen programming language.

Working With Protobuf Source Code
---------------------------------

Most users will find working from
[supported releases](https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf/releases) to be
the easiest path.

If you choose to work from the head revision of the main branch your build will
occasionally be broken by source-incompatible changes and insufficiently-tested
(and therefore broken) behavior.

If you are using C++ or otherwise need to build protobuf from source as a part
of your project, you should pin to a release commit on a release branch.

This is because even release branches can experience some instability in between
release commits.

### Bazel with Bzlmod

Protobuf supports
[Bzlmod](https://bazel.build/external/module) with Bazel 8 +.
Users should specify a dependency on protobuf in their MODULE.bazel file as
follows.

```
bazel_dep(name = "protobuf", version = <VERSION>)
```

Users can optionally override the repo name, such as for compatibility with
WORKSPACE.

```
bazel_dep(name = "protobuf", version = <VERSION>, repo_name = "com_google_protobuf")
```

### Bazel with WORKSPACE

Users can also add the following to their legacy
[WORKSPACE](https://bazel.build/external/overview#workspace-system) file.

Note that with the release of 30.x there are a few more load statements to
properly set up rules_java and rules_python.

```
http_archive(
    name = "com_google_protobuf",
    strip_prefix = "protobuf-VERSION",
    sha256 = ...,
    url = ...,
)

load("@com_google_protobuf//:protobuf_deps.bzl", "protobuf_deps")

protobuf_deps()

load("@rules_java//java:rules_java_deps.bzl", "rules_java_dependencies")

rules_java_dependencies()

load("@rules_java//java:repositories.bzl", "rules_java_toolchains")

rules_java_toolchains()

load("@rules_python//python:repositories.bzl", "py_repositories")

py_repositories()
```

Protobuf Compiler Installation
------------------------------

The protobuf compiler is written in C++. If you are using C++, please follow
the [C++ Installation Instructions](src/README.md) to install protoc along
with the C++ runtime.

For non-C++ users, the simplest way to install the protocol compiler is to
download a pre-built binary from our [GitHub release page]