1 Protocol Buffers - Google's data interchange format 2 =================================================== 3 4 [](https://travis-ci.org/google/protobuf) [](https://ci.appveyor.com/project/protobuf/protobuf) 5 6 Copyright 2008 Google Inc. 7 8 https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/ 9 10 Overview 11 -------- 12 13 Protocol Buffers (a.k.a., protobuf) are Google's language-neutral, 14 platform-neutral, extensible mechanism for serializing structured data. You 15 can find [protobuf's documentation on the Google Developers site](https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/). 16 17 This README file contains protobuf installation instructions. To install 18 protobuf, you need to install the protocol compiler (used to compile .proto 19 files) and the protobuf runtime for your chosen programming language. 20 21 Protocol Compiler Installation 22 ------------------------------ 23 24 The protocol compiler is written in C++. If you are using C++, please follow 25 the [C++ Installation Instructions](src/README.md) to install protoc along 26 with the C++ runtime. 27 28 For non-C++ users, the simplest way to install the protocol compiler is to 29 download a pre-built binary from our release page: 30 31 [https://github.com/google/protobuf/releases](https://github.com/google/protobuf/releases) 32 33 In the downloads section of each release, you can find pre-built binaries in 34 zip packages: protoc-$VERSION-$PLATFORM.zip. It contains the protoc binary 35 as well as a set of standard .proto files distributed along with protobuf. 36 37 If you are looking for an old version that is not available in the release 38 page, check out the maven repo here: 39 40 [http://repo1.maven.org/maven2/com/google/protobuf/protoc/](http://repo1.maven.org/maven2/com/google/protobuf/protoc/) 41 42 These pre-built binaries are only provided for released versions. If you want 43 to use the github master version at HEAD, or you need to modify protobuf code, 44 or you are using C++, it's recommended to build your own protoc binary from 45 source. 46 47 If you would like to build protoc binary from source, see the [C++ Installation 48 Instructions](src/README.md). 49 50 Protobuf Runtime Installation 51 ----------------------------- 52 53 Protobuf supports several different programming languages. For each programming 54 language, you can find instructions in the corresponding source directory about 55 how to install protobuf runtime for that specific language: 56 57 | Language | Source | 58 |--------------------------------------|-------------------------------------------------------| 59 | C++ (include C++ runtime and protoc) | [src](src) | 60 | Java | [java](java) | 61 | Python | [python](python) | 62 | Objective-C | [objectivec](objectivec) | 63 | C# | [csharp](csharp) | 64 | JavaNano | [javanano](javanano) | 65 | JavaScript | [js](js) | 66 | Ruby | [ruby](ruby) | 67 | Go | [golang/protobuf](https://github.com/golang/protobuf) | 68 | PHP | TBD | 69 70 71 Usage 72 ----- 73 74 The complete documentation for Protocol Buffers is available via the 75 web at: 76 77 https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/ 78
