Installing Google Protocol Buffers on mac

Question 1

There are some issues with building protobuf 2.4.1 from source on a Mac. There is a patch that also has to be applied. All this is contained within the homebrew protobuf241 formula, so I would advise using it.

To install protocol buffer version 2.4.1 type the following into a terminal:

brew tap homebrew/versions
brew install protobuf241

If you already have a protocol buffer version that you tried to install from source, you can type the following into a terminal to have the source code overwritten by the homebrew version:

brew link --force --overwrite protobuf241

Check that you now have the correct version installed by typing:

protoc --version

It should display 2.4.1

Question 2

This is not via brew, but the end result is the same.

Download the protobuf-2.4.1 from https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf/releases/tag/v2.4.1
Extract the tar.gz file.
$cd ~/Downloads/protobuf-2.4.1
$./configure
$make
$make check
$sudo make install
$which protoc
$protoc --version

Steps 4-7 are from the README.txt file from the protobuf tarball.

Question 3

It's a new year and there's a new mismatch between the version of protobuf in Homebrew and the cutting edge release. As of February 2016, brew install protobuf will give you version 2.6.1.

If you want the 3.0 beta release instead, you can install it with:

brew install --devel protobuf

Question 4

If you landed here looking for how to install Protocol Buffers on Mac, it can be done using Homebrew by running the command below

brew install protobuf

It installs the latest version of protobuf available. For me, at the time of writing, this installed the v3.7.1

If you'd like to install an older version, please look up the available ones from the package page Protobuf Package - Homebrew and install that specific version of the package.

The oldest available protobuf version in this package is v3.6.1.3

Question 5

For some reason I need to use protobuf 2.4.1 in my project on OS X El Capitan. However homebrew has removed protobuf241 from its formula. I install it according @kksensei's answer manually and have to fix some error during the process.

During the make process, I get 3 error like following:

google/protobuf/message.cc:130:60: error: implicit instantiation of undefined template 'std::__1::basic_istream<char, std::__1::char_traits<char> >'

  return ParseFromZeroCopyStream(&zero_copy_input) && input->eof();

                                                           ^

/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain/usr/bin/../lib/c++/v1/iosfwd:108:28: note: template is declared here

    class _LIBCPP_TYPE_VIS basic_istream;

                           ^

google/protobuf/message.cc:135:67: error: implicit instantiation of undefined template 'std::__1::basic_istream<char, std::__1::char_traits<char> >'

  return ParsePartialFromZeroCopyStream(&zero_copy_input) && input->eof();

                                                                  ^

/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain/usr/bin/../lib/c++/v1/iosfwd:108:28: note: template is declared here

    class _LIBCPP_TYPE_VIS basic_istream;

                           ^

google/protobuf/message.cc:175:16: error: implicit instantiation of undefined template 'std::__1::basic_ostream<char, std::__1::char_traits<char> >'

  return output->good();

               ^

/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain/usr/bin/../lib/c++/v1/iosfwd:110:28: note: template is declared here

    class _LIBCPP_TYPE_VIS basic_ostream;

                           ^

(Sorry, I dont know how to attach code when the code contains '`' )

If you get the same error, please edit src/google/protobuf/message.cc, add #include <istream> at the top of the file and do $ make again and should get no errors. After that do $ sudo make install. When install finished $protoc --version should display the correct result.

Question 6

From https://github.com/paulirish/homebrew-versions-1 . Works for me!

brew install https://raw.githubusercontent.com/paulirish/homebrew-versions-1/master/protobuf241.rb

Question 7

I used macports

sudo port install protobuf-cpp

Question 8

To install Protocol Buffer (as of today version v3.7.0)

Go to this website
download the zip file according to your OS (e.g.: protoc-3.7.0-osx-x86_64.zip). This applies also to other OS.
Move the executable in protoc-3/bin/protoc to one of your directories in PATH. In Mac I suggest to put it into /usr/local/bin

Now your good to go 💪🏾

(optional) There is also an include file, you can add. This is a snippet of the README.md

If you intend to use the included well known types then don't forget to
copy the contents of the 'include' directory somewhere as well, for example
into '/usr/local/include/'.

Please refer to our official github site for more installation instructions:
https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf

Question 9

brew install --devel protobuf

If it tells you "protobuf-2.6.1 already installed": 1. brew uninstall --devel protobuf 2. brew link libtool 3. brew install --devel protobuf

Question 10

There is another official way by Google, as mentioned by another user.

Read it fully before trying.

Here are the steps:

Open Terminal and type the following

PROTOC_ZIP=protoc-3.7.1-osx-x86_64.zip
curl -OL https://github.com/google/protobuf/releases/download/v3.7.1/$PROTOC_ZIP
sudo unzip -o $PROTOC_ZIP -d /usr/local bin/protoc
rm -f $PROTOC_ZIP

Worked for me.

P.S.
This is for version 3.7.1 in osx only. If you want to install some other version/platform, visit the releases link and check out the details of the latest version, and use those information. Reference

Question 11

FWIW., the latest version of brew is at protobuf 3.0, and doesn't include any formulae for the older versions. This is somewhat "inconvenient".

While protobuf may be compatible at the wire level, it is absolutely not compatible at the level of generated java classes: you can't use .class files generated with protoc 2.4 with the protobuf-2.5 JAR, etc. etc. This is why updating protobuf versions is such a sensitive topic in the Hadoop stack: it invariably requires coordination across different projects, and is traumatic enough that nobody likes to do it.

Question 12

HomeBrew versions has been removed and formulaes have been emptied. Therefore, my advice is to install it manually following the following steps.

For the time being you will need to build and install the Protocol Buffers toolset manually.

Download source code: https://github.com/google/protobuf/releases/download/v2.4.1/protobuf-2.4.1.tar.gz
tar xvfz protobuf-2.4.1.tar.gz
cd protobuf-2.4.1
Run ./configure
Edit src/google/protobuf/message.cc, add #include at the top of the file
Run make command from root of the folder, i.e. protobuf-2.4.1/
Run sudo make install
Run /usr/local/bin/protoc --version to check the version of protobuf compiler version The terminal output should be:

Version: libprotoc 2.4.1

Question 13

you can install from official link page provided by google http://google.github.io/proto-lens/installing-protoc.html

Question 14

For v3 users.

http://google.github.io/proto-lens/installing-protoc.html

PROTOC_ZIP=protoc-3.7.1-osx-x86_64.zip
curl -OL https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf/releases/download/v3.7.1/$PROTOC_ZIP
sudo unzip -o $PROTOC_ZIP -d /usr/local bin/protoc
sudo unzip -o $PROTOC_ZIP -d /usr/local 'include/*'
rm -f $PROTOC_ZIP

Question 15

There should be better ways but what I did today was:

Download from https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf/releases (protoc-3.14.0-osx-x86_64.zip at this moment)
Unzip (double click the zip file)
Here, I added a symbolic link

ln -s ~/Downloads/protoc-3.14.0-osx-x86_64/bin/protoc /usr/local/bin/protoc

Check if works

protoc --version