Question

I am currently working on a project, and I am trying to implement Protocol Buffers to work as a serialization format to store data on the local computer, and then be read back at a later time. Some of the features of protocol buffers seem perfect for this project so I was eager to test it out but I have run into some issues.

So far though, I have not even been able to get far enough to test out Protocol Buffers. I downloaded the most recent zip file (version 2.4.1) to my windows machine. I read through the install.txt located in the root of the folder, but it was for Unix based systems. I then saw that it came with a vsprojects folder and read through the instructions listed there. Basically, all I was told to do was open up a solution, and then build the entire solution in either Debug or Release. I instantly received several errors about “config.h” not being found.

I checked over the Unix instructions again and step one was…

1. cd' to the directory containing the package's source code and type
'./configure' to configure the package for your system. If you're
usingcsh’ on an old version of System V, you might need to type
   sh ./configure' instead to preventcsh’ from trying to execute
   `configure’ itself.

Running `configure’ takes awhile. While running, it prints some
messages telling which features it is checking for.

So I booted into ubuntu, which I rarely use, and tried follow these instructions. The step listed above went fine and I was even able to get to the next step and ‘make’ the project, but then when the time came to use ‘make install’ I received the following errors:

ross@ubuntu:~/Desktop/protobuf-2.4.1$ make install
Making install in .
make[1]: Entering directory `/home/ross/Desktop/protobuf-2.4.1'
make[2]: Entering directory `/home/ross/Desktop/protobuf-2.4.1'
make[2]: Nothing to be done for `install-exec-am'.
test -z "/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig" || /bin/mkdir -p "/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig"
/bin/mkdir: cannot create directory `/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig': Permission denied
make[2]: *** [install-pkgconfigDATA] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/ross/Desktop/protobuf-2.4.1'
make[1]: *** [install-am] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/ross/Desktop/protobuf-2.4.1'

make: * [install-recursive] Error 1

I primarily use windows for development, and the entire project I am working with now is being made in windows, so I am a little concerned. Has anybody had any luck building Protocol Buffers in either windows or linux?

Thank you

Answer 1

You can’t do make install as your own user, when you’re trying to install it system-wide.
Either use sudo make install if you have sudo rights, or become root any other possible way and then run it.

If you don’t have admin rights, you can run ./configure --prefix=$HOME/protobuffers, compile and run make install again, it will install them in your home dir in subdir called protobuffers. Note that you might want to adjust your LD_LIBRARY_PATH in profile after that to be able to find libraries. If you only need protoc, that should do the trick.

— edit —

Speaking of which, protoc is also available for windows, and you can use them there as well.
You can download it here.