Installing protoc

In order to build Haskell packages with proto-lens, the Google protobuf compiler (which is a standalone binary named protoc) needs to be installed somewhere on your $PATH. You can get it by downloading the corresponding file for your system from https://github.com/google/protobuf/releases. (The corresponding file will be named something like protoc-*-.zip.)

Here are some OS-specific options for installing the binary. These instructions also install basic .proto files like wrappers.proto, any.proto and descriptor.proto. (Those files aren’t needed by proto-lens itself, but they may be useful for other language bindings/plugins.)

Mac OS X

• If you have Homebrew (which you can get from https://brew.sh), just run:

  brew install protobuf
  

  If you see any error messages, run brew doctor, follow any recommended fixes, and try again. If it still fails, try instead:

  brew upgrade protobuf
  

• Alternately, run the following commands:

  PROTOC_ZIP=protoc-28.0-osx-x86_64.zip
  curl -OL https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf/releases/download/v28.0/$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
  

Linux

• Run the following commands:

  PROTOC_ZIP=protoc-28.0-linux-x86_64.zip
  curl -OL https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf/releases/download/v28.0/$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
  

• Alternately, manually download and install protoc from here.