# Understanding protobuf plugins/runtime library

**URL:** <https://discuss.dgraph.io/t/understanding-protobuf-plugins-runtime-library/926>\
**Category:** Users\
**Created:** [September 23, 2016, 12:03pm UTC](https://discuss.dgraph.io/t/understanding-protobuf-plugins-runtime-library/926 "2016-09-23T12:03:02Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![pawan](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/discuss.dgraph.io/pawan/32/1946_2.png) [@pawan](https://discuss.dgraph.io/u/pawan)\
**Post date:** [September 23, 2016, 12:03pm UTC](https://discuss.dgraph.io/t/understanding-protobuf-plugins-runtime-library/926/1 "2016-09-23T12:03:02Z")

</div>

So @mrjn mentioned a doubt about whether a couple of libraries regarding gogo protobuf should be vendored in or not. I did some experimentation and learnt some things which I wanted to jot down in a topic for future reference. Maybe this can be part of the Wiki later. Maybe you guys already know these things still thought I’d share what I learned here.

For those who haven’t used `proto` files much, I will try to give some background. To use protocol buffer, you need three things.

1. Protocol buffer compiler `protoc`
2. Compiler plugin to generate `.pb.go` files from `.proto` files. This could be `github.com/golang/protobuf/protoc-gen-go` or recently we started using `github.com/gogo/protobuf/protoc-gen-gofast`.
3. Runtime library which does unmarshalling and marshalling at runtime. This could be `github.com/golang/protobuf/proto` or `github.com/gogo/protobuf/proto`. This is part of your code.

Now with regards to vendoring in the compiler plugin. That won’t help us because while running this command `protoc --gofast_out=plugins=grpc:. *.proto`, proto compiler searches for the plugin in our `PATH`.

As you know, when we do a `go get github.com/gogo/protobuf/protoc-gen-gofast`, it installs the binary under `$GOPATH/bin`, hence its available in our `PATH` and things work. So it’s important for the user to install the plugin.

I still have to check about using the runtime library from Gogo guys instead of the Golang one. There are also a bunch of extensions which can make gogo even faster [protobuf/extensions.md at master · gogo/protobuf · GitHub](https://github.com/gogo/protobuf/blob/master/extensions.md). Though I am not sure if using these would break the compatability of the Python/Java clients.

All this understanding helped in deleting a couple of lines from the Wiki 😛 .

Updated Wiki section - [https://wiki.dgraph.io/Contributing\_to\_Dgraph#Protocol\_buffers\_.28Optional.29](https://wiki.dgraph.io/Contributing_to_Dgraph#Protocol_buffers_.28Optional.29)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![pawan](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/discuss.dgraph.io/pawan/32/1946_2.png) [@pawan](https://discuss.dgraph.io/u/pawan)\
**Post date:** [November 28, 2017, 12:59am UTC](https://discuss.dgraph.io/t/understanding-protobuf-plugins-runtime-library/926/2 "2017-11-28T00:59:39Z")

</div>

This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.