CODEWITHSUNDEEP
protocol-buffers
rophl
rophl

Reputation: 187

How can I get an internal representation out of protoc?

I want to generate ReST documentation from my .proto definitions. I understand I can do this by writing a C++ plugin for protoc but that's too time-consuming for my current situation. Is there a way to make protoc output a parsed representation of the definitions with comments still included?

I'm using protobuf 3.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 2695

Answers (1)

Kenton Varda
Kenton Varda

Reputation: 45296

Plugins don't need to be implemented in C++ -- they can be in any language. A plugin is a program that reads a CodeGeneratorRequest on standard input and then writes a CodeGeneratorResponse to standard output.

Alternatively, you can also use protoc --include_source_info --descriptor_set_out=FILENAME to generate a FileDescriptorSet. Note, though, that this contains somewhat less information than CodeGeneratorRequest.

Information about comments can be found in FileDescriptorProto.source_code_info, which has type SourceCodeInfo. (Note that --descriptor_set_out strips this information unless you also use --include_source_info.)

Upvotes: 4

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