Install Protocol Buffers on Windows

Question

I am unable to find clear instructions to install Google Protocol Buffers (including compiler) on Windows x64 platform.

I went through the instructions README file for c

Answer 1

There is a whole documentation file for compiling protobuf on Windows :

• https://github.com/google/protobuf/blob/master/src/README.md#c-installation---windows
• https://github.com/google/protobuf/blob/master/cmake/README.md

You'll need 7-zip, Cmake and Visual Studio.

Anyway, one of the unexpected side-effects of using a Continuous Integration tool (like Travis or Appveyor) is that there is always a up-to-date and working build script available. I happen to always look at appveyor.yml and travis_config.yml files whenever they exists.

>>> git clone -b v3.1.0 https://github.com/google/protobuf.git 
>>> cd protobuf
>>> curl -L -o release-1.7.0.zip https://github.com/google/googlemock/archive/release-1.7.0.zip
>>> 7z x release-1.7.0.zip
>>> del /Q release-1.7.0.zip
>>> rename googlemock-release-1.7.0 gmock
>>> curl -L -o release-1.7.0.zip "https://github.com/google/googletest/archive/release-1.7.0.zip"
>>> 7z x release-1.7.0.zip
>>> del /Q release-1.7.0.zip
>>> rename googletest-release-1.7.0 gtest
>>> move gtest gmock
>>> set generator=Visual Studio 12 Win64
>>> set vcplatform=x64
>>> mkdir build_msvc
>>> cd build_msvc
>>> cmake -G "%generator%" -Dprotobuf_BUILD_SHARED_LIBS=%BUILD_DLL% -Dprotobuf_UNICODE=%UNICODE% ../cmake
>>> msbuild protobuf.sln /p:Platform=%vcplatform% || goto error

You'll need curl (Git Bash has it) as well as resolving paths for the 7z.exe and Msbuild.exe executables.

I successfully managed to build the protobuf compiler on a Windows 10 x64 machine with Visual Studio 2015.