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How can I install protoc, the protobuf compiler to generate Java, on Ubuntu 16.04?

Martin Thoma
  • 20,535

6 Answers6

108

See https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf/blob/master/src/README.md:

Prerequesites

$ sudo apt-get install autoconf automake libtool curl make g++ unzip

Installation

  1. From this page, download the protobuf-all-[VERSION].tar.gz.
  2. Extract the contents and change in the directory
  3. ./configure
  4. make
  5. make check
  6. sudo make install
  7. sudo ldconfig # refresh shared library cache.

Check if it works

$ protoc --version
libprotoc 3.6.1
congusbongus
  • 134
Martin Thoma
  • 20,535
61
sudo apt install protobuf-compiler
John Kugelman
  • 1,441
12

If you are a non-C++ user and/or don't want to compile it yourself, the simplest way to install the current version of protoc is to download a pre-built binary from the release page.

https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf/releases

To install, simply place this binary somewhere in your PATH (e.g. /usr/local/bin).

(If you intend to use the included well known types then don't forget to copy the contents of the 'include' directory somewhere as well, for example into /usr/local/include/.)

Example:

wget https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf/releases/download/v21.12/protoc-21.12-linux-x86_64.zip
sudo unzip -o protoc-21.12-linux-x86_64.zip -d /usr/local bin/protoc
sudo unzip -o protoc-21.12-linux-x86_64.zip -d /usr/local 'include/*'
# now test:
protoc --version
joe
  • 153
Matt Ke
  • 221
3

Use this if you are having errors like

google/protobuf/descriptor.proto: File not found.
google/protobuf/duration.proto: File not found.
google/protobuf/timestamp.proto: File not found.

PROTOC_ZIP=protoc-3.7.1-linux-x86_64.zip
curl -OL https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf/releases/download/v3.7.1/$PROTOC_ZIP
sudo unzip -o $PROTOC_ZIP -d /usr/local bin/protoc
sudo unzip -o $PROTOC_ZIP -d /usr/local 'include/*'
rm -f $PROTOC_ZIP

This is useful when you are doing generation for go using protoc-gen-go as it requires the base proto files to be present in default include folders

Greenonline
  • 2,182
Jital Patel
  • 31
2

You can download binary from the source code and use next commands

sudo rm -rf ./protoc
unzip protoc-3.10.1-linux-x86_64.zip -d protoc
chmod 755 -R protoc
BASE=/usr/local
sudo rm -rf $BASE/include/google/protobuf/
sudo cp protoc/bin/protoc $BASE/bin 
sudo cp -R protoc/include/* $BASE/include

Change your base to /usr/, or /usr/loca/, or anything else in your PATH.

y.selivonchyk
  • 160
1

1) Download binary from the url https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf/releases

2) extract and keep the directory at particular location (/user/app/protoc)

3) add the entry in /usr//.bash_profile as export PROTOC_HOME=/user/app/protoc export PATH=$PROTOC_HOME/bin:$PATH

4) refresh file $source /usr/<username>/.bash_profile

Other option is run the following command one by one after downloading the repository :

sudo rm -rf ./protoc

unzip protoc-3.10.1-linux-x86_64.zip -d protoc

chmod 755 -R protoc

BASE=/usr/local

sudo rm -rf $BASE/include/google/protobuf/

sudo cp protoc/bin/protoc $BASE/bin

sudo cp -R protoc/include/* $BASE/include

Uday Chauhan
  • 111