grpc-swift-protobuf/Sources/GRPCProtobuf/Documentation.docc/Articles/Installing-protoc.md

Installing protoc

Learn how to install protoc, the Protocol Buffers compiler.

Overview

The Protocol Buffers compiler is a command line tool for generating source code from .proto files and is required to generate gRPC stubs and messages. You can learn more about it on the Protocol Buffers website.

You can install protoc in a number of ways including:

1. Via a package manager,
2. By downloading the binary.

Install via a package manager

Using a package manager is the easiest way to install protoc.

On macOS you can use Homebrew:

brew install protobuf

On Ubuntu and Debian you can use apt:

apt update && apt install -y protobuf-compiler

On Fedora you can use dnf:

dnf install -y protobuf-compiler

Installing a pre-built binary

If you're unable to use a package manager to install protoc then you may be able to download a pre-built binary from the Protocol Buffers GitHub repository.

First, find and download the appropriate binary for your system from the releases page.

Next, unzip the artifact to a directory called protoc:

unzip /path/to/downloaded/protoc-{VERSION}-{OS}.zip -d protoc

Finally, move protoc/bin/protoc to somewhere in your $PATH such as /usr/local/bin:

mv protoc/bin/protoc /usr/local/bin

You can now remove the protoc directory.