protoc3 on Ubuntu

protoc3 on Ubuntu

I am on Ubuntu 16.04.5 LTS.

$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 16.04.5 LTS
Release:        16.04
Codename:       xenial

I wanted to install latest protoc (which at the time of writing this is version 3.6.1).

Running apt-get (as whoen below) installed version 2.6.1
$ sudo apt-get install protobuf-compiler
$ sudo apt-get install libprotobuf-dev
$ protoc --version
libprotoc 2.6.1

Getting latest protoc on Ubuntu is easy. Following are the instructions.

1. Find the latest release or the release you want at https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf/releases
2. Locate your release and download it. I am getting 3.6.1
    $ wget https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf/releases/download/v3.6.1/protoc-3.6.1-linux-x86_64.zip
3. Unzip it
    $ unzip protoc-3.6.1-linux-x86_64.zip -d protoc-3.6.1    
4. $ cd protoc-3.6.1/bin
5. $ ./protoc --version
        libprotoc 3.6.1
6. move protoc the binary to appropriate bin directory.


Generate descriptor files. 

$ protoc --descriptor_set_out=./descriptors.protoset \
    --include_source_info \
    --include_imports -I. po.proto