Protoc Plugin Boilerplate

Overview

This library serves as a boilerplate to build code generators with protobuf compiler plugins.
At Bifrost, we use quite a few code generators which are all protobuf compiler plugins and this library is the boilerplate that we use to build them. Using protobufs as a single source of truth has the added benefit of letting us efficiently use different programming languages so our developers can use the language they fancy to work on their projects. github.com/lyft/protoc-gen-star is the library that is in this boilerplate

Google WellKnown Types

Most often we found ourselves using Google Well-Known Types as defined in https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/docs/reference/google.protobuf. the following table is the filename (proto import) to package (go import) for github.com/gogo/protobuf

File Name	Package
google/protobuf/any.proto	github.com/gogo/protobuf/types
google/protobuf/api.proto	google.golang.org/genproto/protobuf/api
google/protobuf/compiler/plugin.proto	github.com/gogo/protobuf/protoc-gen-gogo/plugin
google/protobuf/descriptor.proto	github.com/gogo/protobuf/protoc-gen-gogo/descriptor
google/protobuf/duration.proto	github.com/gogo/protobuf/types
google/protobuf/empty.proto	github.com/gogo/protobuf/types
google/protobuf/field_mask.proto	github.com/gogo/protobuf/types
google/protobuf/source_context.proto	google.golang.org/genproto/protobuf/source_context
google/protobuf/struct.proto	github.com/gogo/protobuf/types
google/protobuf/timestamp.proto	github.com/gogo/protobuf/types
google/protobuf/type.proto	google.golang.org/genproto/protobuf/ptype
google/protobuf/wrappers.proto	github.com/gogo/protobuf/types

the following table is the filename (proto import) to package (go import) for github.com/gogo/protobuf keep in mind that when using protoc-gen-star library to crete a new plugin, you must use github.com/golang/protobuf/ packages.

File Name	Package
google/protobuf/any.proto	github.com/golang/protobuf/ptypes/any
google/protobuf/api.proto	google.golang.org/genproto/protobuf/api
google/protobuf/compiler/plugin.proto	github.com/golang/protobuf/protoc-gen-go/plugin
google/protobuf/descriptor.proto	github.com/golang/protobuf/protoc-gen-go/descriptor
google/protobuf/duration.proto	github.com/golang/protobuf/ptypes/duration
google/protobuf/empty.proto	github.com/golang/protobuf/ptypes/empty
google/protobuf/field_mask.proto	google.golang.org/genproto/protobuf/field_mask
google/protobuf/source_context.proto	google.golang.org/genproto/protobuf/source_context
google/protobuf/struct.proto	github.com/golang/protobuf/ptypes/struct
google/protobuf/timestamp.proto	github.com/golang/protobuf/ptypes/timestamp
google/protobuf/type.proto	google.golang.org/genproto/protobuf/ptype
google/protobuf/wrappers.proto	github.com/golang/protobuf/ptypes/wrappers

Build

Dependencies

We use mage as our main build tool and packr to embed static files (the templates).

install mage by running :

go get -u -d -v github.com/magefile/mage
cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/magefile/mage
go run bootstrap.go

install packr by running :

go get -u -v github.com/gobuffalo/packr/v2/...
go get -u -v github.com/gobuffalo/packr/v2/packr2

Commands

• mage build : rebuild the plugin and generate examples in /example
• mage clean : remove generated go files in example folder and clean up the files packer generates