0c52335587
This will allow SourceLink as per #4179, and mean that we can use C# 7.0 language features in the library (but not in generated code). This does not affect which platforms we're *targeting*, so end users won't see any difference. It would be nice to update to 2.1.4, but AppVeyor's "Visual Studio 2017" environment is only 2.0.3. |
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|---|---|---|
| .. | ||
| compatibility_tests/v3.0.0 | ||
| keys | ||
| protos | ||
| src | ||
| .gitignore | ||
| build_packages.bat | ||
| build_tools.sh | ||
| buildall.sh | ||
| CHANGES.txt | ||
| generate_protos.sh | ||
| global.json | ||
| Google.Protobuf.Tools.nuspec | ||
| README.md | ||
This directory contains the C# Protocol Buffers runtime library.
Usage
The easiest way how to use C# protobufs is via the Google.Protobuf
NuGet package. Just add the NuGet package to your VS project.
You will also want to install the Google.Protobuf.Tools NuGet package, which
contains precompiled version of protoc.exe and a copy of well known .proto
files under the package's tools directory.
To generate C# files from your .proto files, invoke protoc with the
--csharp_out option.
Supported platforms
The runtime library is built as a portable class library, supporting:
- .NET 4.5
- Windows 8
- Windows Phone Silverlight 8
- Windows Phone 8.1
- .NET Core
You should be able to use Protocol Buffers in Visual Studio 2012 and
all later versions. This includes all code generated by protoc,
which only uses features from C# 3 and earlier.
Building
Open the src/Google.Protobuf.sln solution in Visual Studio 2017 or
later.
Although users of this project are only expected to have Visual
Studio 2012 or later, developers of the library are required to
have Visual Studio 2017 or later, as the library uses C# 6 features
in its implementation, as well as the new Visual Studio 2017 csproj
format. These features have no impact when using the compiled code -
they're only relevant when building the Google.Protobuf assembly.
Testing
The unit tests use NUnit 3. NUnit doesn't yet
support dotnet test, so for now the test project is a console application
using NUnitLite. Simply run Google.Protobuf.Test.exe to run the unit tests
directly, or else use dotnet run.
.NET 3.5
We don't officially support .NET 3.5. However, there has been some effort to make enabling .NET 3.5 support relatively painless in case you require it. There's no guarantee that this will continue in the future, so rely on .NET 3.5 support at your peril.
To enable .NET 3.5 support, you must edit the TargetFrameworks elements of
src/Google.Protobuf/Google.Protobuf.csproj
(and src/Google.Protobuf.Test/Google.Protobuf.Test.csproj
if you want to run the unit tests):
Open the .csproj file in a text editor and simply add net35 to the list of
target frameworks, noting that the TargetFrameworks element appears twice in
the file (once in the first PropertyGroup element, and again in the second
PropertyGroup element, i.e., the one with the conditional).
History of C# protobufs
This subtree was originally imported from https://github.com/jskeet/protobuf-csharp-port and represents the latest development version of C# protobufs, that will now be developed and maintained by Google. All the development will be done in open, under this repository (https://github.com/google/protobuf).
The previous project differs from this project in a number of ways:
- The old code only supported proto2; the new code only supports proto3 (so no unknown fields, no required/optional distinction, no extensions)
- The old code was based on immutable message types and builders for them
- The old code did not support maps or
oneof - The old code had its own JSON representation, whereas the new code uses the standard protobuf JSON representation
- The old code had no notion of the "well-known types" which have special support in the new code
- The old project supported some older platforms (such as older versions of Silverlight) which are not currently supported in the new project