93 lines
3.5 KiB
Markdown
93 lines
3.5 KiB
Markdown
This directory contains the C# Protocol Buffers runtime library.
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Usage
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=====
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The easiest way how to use C# protobufs is via the `Google.Protobuf`
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NuGet package. Just add the NuGet package to your VS project.
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You will also want to install the `Google.Protobuf.Tools` NuGet package, which
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contains precompiled version of `protoc.exe` and a copy of well known `.proto`
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files under the package's `tools` directory.
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To generate C# files from your `.proto` files, invoke `protoc` with the
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`--csharp_out` option.
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Supported platforms
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===================
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The runtime library is built as a portable class library, supporting:
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- .NET 4.5
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- Windows 8
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- Windows Phone Silverlight 8
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- Windows Phone 8.1
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- .NET Core
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You should be able to use Protocol Buffers in Visual Studio 2012 and
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all later versions. This includes all code generated by `protoc`,
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which only uses features from C# 3 and earlier.
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Building
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========
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Open the `src/Google.Protobuf.sln` solution in Visual Studio 2017 or
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later.
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Although *users* of this project are only expected to have Visual
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Studio 2012 or later, *developers* of the library are required to
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have Visual Studio 2017 or later, as the library uses C# 6 features
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in its implementation, as well as the new Visual Studio 2017 csproj
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format. These features have no impact when using the compiled code -
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they're only relevant when building the `Google.Protobuf` assembly.
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Testing
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=======
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The unit tests use [NUnit 3](https://github.com/nunit/nunit). NUnit doesn't yet
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support `dotnet test`, so for now the test project is a console application
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using NUnitLite. Simply run `Google.Protobuf.Test.exe` to run the unit tests
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directly, or else use `dotnet run`.
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.NET 3.5
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========
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We don't officially support .NET 3.5. However, there has been some effort
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to make enabling .NET 3.5 support relatively painless in case you require it.
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There's no guarantee that this will continue in the future, so rely on .NET
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3.5 support at your peril.
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To enable .NET 3.5 support, you must edit the `TargetFrameworks` elements of
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[src/Google.Protobuf/Google.Protobuf.csproj](src/Google.Protobuf/Google.Protobuf.csproj)
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(and [src/Google.Protobuf.Test/Google.Protobuf.Test.csproj](src/Google.Protobuf.Test/Google.Protobuf.Test.csproj)
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if you want to run the unit tests):
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Open the .csproj file in a text editor and simply add `net35` to the list of
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target frameworks, noting that the `TargetFrameworks` element appears twice in
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the file (once in the first `PropertyGroup` element, and again in the second
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`PropertyGroup` element, i.e., the one with the conditional).
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History of C# protobufs
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=======================
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This subtree was originally imported from https://github.com/jskeet/protobuf-csharp-port
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and represents the latest development version of C# protobufs, that will now be developed
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and maintained by Google. All the development will be done in open, under this repository
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(https://github.com/google/protobuf).
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The previous project differs from this project in a number of ways:
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- The old code only supported proto2; the new code only supports
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proto3 (so no unknown fields, no required/optional distinction, no
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extensions)
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- The old code was based on immutable message types and builders for
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them
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- The old code did not support maps or `oneof`
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- The old code had its own JSON representation, whereas the new code
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uses the standard protobuf JSON representation
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- The old code had no notion of the "well-known types" which have
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special support in the new code
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- The old project supported some older platforms (such as older
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versions of Silverlight) which are not currently supported in the
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new project
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