Plugins

The work plugins refers to both protoc plugins (standalone binary tool that communicate with the protoc tool over stdin/stdout) or gazelle plugin (go implementation of the Plugin interface). The latter is used by gazelle to predict what files will be generated by the former.

Gazelle protobuf plugins are installed into a global registry via a golang init() function.

Naming of plugins is reminiscent of maven coordinates. The name is just a string, but by convention it should follow the pattern OWNER:REPO:TOOL. For example, the protoc-gen-mypy tool that exists in the repo at https://github.com/dropbox/mypy-protobuf would have the name dropbox:mypy-protobuf:protoc-gen-mypy. The top-level domain is not used.

Built-in plugins

These plugins are part of the protoc tool itself, no additional plugins or dependencies are required.

plugin name	description
builtin:java	Mirrors --java_out
builtin:cpp	Mirrors --cpp_out
builtin:python	Mirrors --python_out
builtin:objc	Mirrors --objc_out
builtin:php	Mirrors --php_out
builtin:csharp	Mirrors --csharp_out
builtin:ruby	Mirrors --ruby_out
builtin:js:common	Mirrors --js_out=import_style=commonjs
builtin:js:closure	Mirrors --js_out=import_style=closure

Third-party plugins

plugin name	description
gogo/protobuf/protoc-gen-combo	Mirrors https://github.com/gogo/protobuf/protoc-gen-gogo
gogo/protobuf/protoc-gen-gogo	Mirrors https://github.com/gogo/protobuf/protoc-gen-gogo
gogo/protobuf/protoc-gen-gogofast	Mirrors https://github.com/gogo/protobuf/protoc-gen-gogo
gogo/protobuf/protoc-gen-gogofaster	Mirrors https://github.com/gogo/protobuf/protoc-gen-gogo
gogo/protobuf/protoc-gen-gogoslick	Mirrors https://github.com/gogo/protobuf/protoc-gen-gogo
gogo/protobuf/protoc-gen-gogotypes	Mirrors https://github.com/gogo/protobuf/protoc-gen-gogo
gogo/protobuf/protoc-gen-gostring	Mirrors https://github.com/gogo/protobuf/protoc-gen-gogo
grpc-ecosystem:grpc-gateway:protoc-gen-grpc-gateway	Mirrors https://github.com/grpc-ecosystem/grpc-gateway/protoc-gen-grpc-gateway
grpc-ecosystem:grpc-gateway:protoc-gen-openapiv2	Mirrors https://github.com/grpc-ecosystem/grpc-gateway/protoc-gen-openapiv2
grpc:grpc-go:protoc-gen-go-grpc	Mirrors https://github.com/grpc/grpc-go/protoc-gen-go-grpc
golang:protobuf:protoc-gen-go	Mirrors https://github.com/golang/protobuf/protoc-gen-go
grpc:grpc-web:protoc-gen-grpc-web	Mirrors https://github.com/grpc/grpc-java/grpc_java_plugin
grpc:grpc-java:protoc-gen-grpc-java	Mirrors https://github.com/grpc/grpc-java/grpc_java_plugin
grpc:grpc:grpc_cpp_plugin	Mirrors https://github.com/grpc/grpc/grpc_cpp_plugin
grpc:grpc:grpc_objc_plugin	Mirrors https://github.com/grpc/grpc/grpc_objc_plugin
grpc:grpc:grpc_python_plugin	Mirrors https://github.com/grpc/grpc/grpc_python_plugin
dropbox:mypy-protobuf:protoc-gen-mypy	Mirrors https://github.com/dropbox/mypy-protobuf:protoc-gen-mypy
stackb:grpc.js:protoc-gen-grpcjs	Mirrors https://github.com/dropbox/mypy-protobuf:protoc-gen-mypy
protobufjs/protobuf.js:pbjs*	Mirrors https://github.com/protobufjs/protobuf.js/pbjs
protobufjs/protobuf.js:pbts*	Mirrors https://github.com/protobufjs/protobuf.js/pbts

• pbjs and pbts are not actual protoc plugins. Rather, they are standalone tools that work in conjunction with the protobufjs_compile rule.

TODO: Haskell, scala, d, dart, kotlin, android (protobuf-lite), other typescript, grpc-tools, rust.

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