Edit: I am deeply saddened that this comment was marked as 'off-topic', but i'm not here to fight this. You do you I guess, and I hope you're happy that I wasted 3 hours of my life typing the guide below rather than doing something "productive." The point for this comment was for people who may have experienced a similar problem and wanted to solve it right away without having to wait for this 'issue' to be fixed. Whatever... I guess.
For protobuf, a way I figured out how to get it working (it took me over three hours to find a solution that worked for me) is to
- Download the latest version of protobuf (https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf/releases/latest) for your machine [I chose v23.3 {as of the time of making this comment} osx x86_64, but make sure to choose the correct version for your machine.]
- Extract the file(s) and locate protoc using the command
which protoc. Save that location for later.
2a. During the time this has been written, the version i was previously on was 21.12 which was located in /usr/local/Cellar/protobuf (Case Sensitive)
-
Either using terminal, or Finder (assuming you're on MacOS), create a folder with the version that is available (for me, it's 23.3). Using Terminal, you can create the file by doing
mkdir <version.number>(example:mkdir 23.3) in/usr/local/Cellar/protobuf/, or y'know, you can also use Finder using a couple clicks and your keyboard to accomplish the same task. Whichever way you prefer. -
Go back to the unzipped protobuf/protoc folder and copy everything to the new folder you created in
/usr/local/Cellar/protobuf/
4a. You are now going to need to go to /usr/local/bin as we're going to remove protoc and protoc-3.<version.number>.0 (example old file: protoc-3.21.12.0)
- You're going to have to create a Symbolic Link,
5a. How I created the Symbolic Link was by doing this while in /usr/local/Cellar/protobuf/<version.number> (ex: .../protobuf/23.3): ln -s "$PWD/./protoc-3.<version.number>.0" protoc (example: ln -s "$PWD/./protoc-3.23.3.0" protoc)
5b. COPY (meaning leave the symbolic link in /usr/local/Cellar/protobuf/<version.number>/) protoc into /usr/local/bin/ (I would personally recommend putting the previous version of the protoc symbolic link from /usr/local/bin/ to the trash, but don't remove it in case you need it again)
5c. Create another symbolic link, this one for protoc-3.<version.number>.0. Create it in /usr/local/Cellar/protobuf/<version.number>, but how I did it was by doing ln -s "$PWD/./protoc-3.<version.number>.0" protoc-3.<version.number>. [example: ...Create it in /usr/local/Cellar/protobuf/23.3 ...was by doing ln -s "$PWD/./protoc-3.23.3.0" protoc-3.23.3.] (omitting the '0' at the end, or it wouldn't create the symbolic link.
5d. MOVE (NOT copy) protoc-3.<version.number>. to /usr/local/bin/ and then RENAME protoc-3.<version.number>. to protoc-3.<version.number>.0 (example: rename protoc-3.23.3. to protoc-3.23.3.0)
5e. After all of that, remove the previous protoc-3-<oldversion.number>.0 [example: protoc-3-21.12.0 (by that, i mean put it in the trash for right now in case you need it again)
- In the Terminal, I'd recommend opening another instance, just to be sure in case something goes wrong.
6a. While in that new Terminal instance (assuming you're in your user directory [if not, just type cd]), type protoc --version
6b. If protoc --version shows "libprotoc <latestversion.number>" (Example: "libprotoc 23.3", then you have successfully installed protobuf.
- I would now recommend running
brew updateandbrew upgradeand you should no longer see anything aboutprotobufneeding to be built and/or updated or whatever it does.
I am aware that this is pretty long, but this is the way that I solved it. I'm very positive that this could be condensed down A LOT more, but again, this is the way that I did it, and this is the way that it worked for me.
If anyone wants to modify the way I did it, and possibly make it easier to do and/or understand, please, be my guest.