protobuf/csharp
Guillaume Turri 9b8da104c1 Rm check on dependency in the C# reflection API (#2051)
This check adds a few constraints on the way to build a project when we have
a proto file which imports another one. In particular, on projects which
build both C# and Java, it's easy to end up with exceptions like

    Expected: included.proto but was src/main/protobuf/included.proto

A user may work around this issue, but it may add unnecessary constraints
on the layout of the project.

According to f3504cf3b1 (diff-ecb0b909ed572381a1c8d1994f09a948R309)
it has already been considered to get rid of this check, for
similar considerations, and because it doesn't exist in the Java code
2016-09-05 09:29:03 +01:00
..
keys Add a link 2016-02-10 08:16:45 -08:00
protos Code review fixes 2016-03-29 20:56:32 +03:00
src Rm check on dependency in the C# reflection API (#2051) 2016-09-05 09:29:03 +01:00
.gitignore Move to dotnet cli for building, and .NET Core (netstandard1.0) as target platform (#1727) 2016-07-14 22:16:35 +01:00
build_packages.bat Move to dotnet cli for building, and .NET Core (netstandard1.0) as target platform (#1727) 2016-07-14 22:16:35 +01:00
buildall.sh Move to dotnet cli for building, and .NET Core (netstandard1.0) as target platform (#1727) 2016-07-14 22:16:35 +01:00
CHANGES.txt Fix typos in README.md/CHANGES.txt 2016-01-11 14:52:01 -08:00
generate_protos.sh Generate C# code whenever descriptor.proto changes 2016-02-15 10:33:13 +00:00
Google.Protobuf.Tools.nuspec Bump version number for GA 2016-07-25 12:07:56 -07:00
README.md Modify csharp README since there are now two NuGet packages 2016-06-22 07:39:05 -07:00

This directory contains the C# Protocol Buffers runtime library.

Status: Beta - ready for external testing

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 2015 or later. You should be able to run the NUnit test from Test Explorer (you might need to install NUnit Visual Studio add-in).

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 2015 or later, as the library uses C# 6 features in its implementation. These features have no impact when using the compiled code - they're only relevant when building the Google.Protobuf assembly.

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