protoc

This gem includes protoc, the protobuf compiler, binaries for Linux, Mac, Windows and AIX. It installs a executable shim called protoc that picks the right one to run on your platform. You can use this gem to ensure that you have a protoc of the version you need. By using this gem, you will not need to manually install the right protoc on your hosts.

The pre-built linux protoc binaries are not compatible with all systems. For this reason the protobuf source code is included in this gem, and a new protoc binary is built upon gem installation when the pre-built one does not function.

Put protoc in your Gemfile, with the version of protobuf that you need.

depends 'protoc', '2.6.1'

Run protoc using bundle exec. This ensures that you run protoc from this gem.

$ bundle exec protoc --version
libprotoc 2.6.1

The protoc binaries included in this gem (with the exception of the AIX binary) came from the artifact available in Maven Central.

An AIX compatible binary has been added to the /bin folder, as the version of protobuf being used does not compile correctly when attempting to install the gem on AIX.

A compilation on AIX fails as a result of the wrong header file being used when the AIX platform is detected. The fix applied was as follows:

In the file: ../protoc-gem/ext/protoc/protobuf/src/google/protobuf/stubs/atomicops.h

// AIX
#elif defined(GOOGLE_PROTOBUF_OS_AIX)
#include <google/protobuf/stubs/atomicops_internals_power.h>

was changed to:

// AIX
#elif defined(GOOGLE_PROTOBUF_OS_AIX)
#include <google/protobuf/stubs/atomicops_internals_generic_gcc.h>

MD5 (protoc-2.6.1-aix-powerpc) = 23945207b57158d5353a48a366b8fda4