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| 1 This directory contains project files for compiling Protocol Buffers using |
| 2 MSVC. This is not the recommended way to do Protocol Buffer development -- |
| 3 we prefer to develop under a Unix-like environment -- but it may be more |
| 4 accessible to those who primarily work with MSVC. |
| 5 |
| 6 Compiling and Installing |
| 7 ======================== |
| 8 |
| 9 1) Open protobuf.sln in Microsoft Visual Studio. |
| 10 2) Choose "Debug" or "Release" configuration as desired.* |
| 11 3) From the Build menu, choose "Build Solution". Wait for compiling to finish. |
| 12 4) From a command shell, run tests.exe and lite-test.exe and check that all |
| 13 tests pass. |
| 14 5) Run extract_includes.bat to copy all the public headers into a separate |
| 15 "include" directory (under the top-level package directory). |
| 16 6) Copy the contents of the include directory to wherever you want to put |
| 17 headers. |
| 18 7) Copy protoc.exe wherever you put build tools (probably somewhere in your |
| 19 PATH). |
| 20 8) Copy libprotobuf.lib, libprotobuf-lite.lib, and libprotoc.lib wherever you |
| 21 put libraries. |
| 22 |
| 23 * To avoid conflicts between the MSVC debug and release runtime libraries, when |
| 24 compiling a debug build of your application, you may need to link against a |
| 25 debug build of libprotobuf.lib. Similarly, release builds should link against |
| 26 release libs. |
| 27 |
| 28 DLLs vs. static linking |
| 29 ======================= |
| 30 |
| 31 Static linking is now the default for the Protocol Buffer libraries. Due to |
| 32 issues with Win32's use of a separate heap for each DLL, as well as binary |
| 33 compatibility issues between different versions of MSVC's STL library, it is |
| 34 recommended that you use static linkage only. However, it is possible to |
| 35 build libprotobuf and libprotoc as DLLs if you really want. To do this, |
| 36 do the following: |
| 37 |
| 38 1) Open protobuf.sln in MSVC. |
| 39 2) For each of the projects libprotobuf, libprotobuf-lite, and libprotoc, do |
| 40 the following: |
| 41 2a) Right-click the project and choose "properties". |
| 42 2b) From the side bar, choose "General", under "Configuration Properties". |
| 43 2c) Change the "Configuration Type" to "Dynamic Library (.dll)". |
| 44 2d) From the side bar, choose "Preprocessor", under "C/C++". |
| 45 2e) Add PROTOBUF_USE_DLLS to the list of preprocessor defines. |
| 46 3) When compiling your project, make sure to #define PROTOBUF_USE_DLLS. |
| 47 |
| 48 When distributing your software to end users, we strongly recommend that you |
| 49 do NOT install libprotobuf.dll or libprotoc.dll to any shared location. |
| 50 Instead, keep these libraries next to your binaries, in your application's |
| 51 own install directory. C++ makes it very difficult to maintain binary |
| 52 compatibility between releases, so it is likely that future versions of these |
| 53 libraries will *not* be usable as drop-in replacements. |
| 54 |
| 55 If your project is itself a DLL intended for use by third-party software, we |
| 56 recommend that you do NOT expose protocol buffer objects in your library's |
| 57 public interface, and that you statically link protocol buffers into your |
| 58 library. |
| 59 |
| 60 ZLib support |
| 61 ============ |
| 62 |
| 63 If you want to include GzipInputStream and GzipOutputStream |
| 64 (google/protobuf/io/gzip_stream.h) in libprotoc, you will need to do a few |
| 65 additional steps: |
| 66 |
| 67 1) Obtain a copy of the zlib library. The pre-compiled DLL at zlib.net works. |
| 68 2) Make sure zlib's two headers are in your include path and that the .lib file |
| 69 is in your library path. You could place all three files directly into the |
| 70 vsproject directory to compile libprotobuf, but they need to be visible to |
| 71 your own project as well, so you should probably just put them into the |
| 72 VC shared icnlude and library directories. |
| 73 3) Right-click on the "tests" project and choose "properties". Navigate the |
| 74 sidebar to "Configuration Properties" -> "Linker" -> "Input". |
| 75 4) Under "Additional Dependencies", add the name of the zlib .lib file (e.g. |
| 76 zdll.lib). Make sure to update both the Debug and Release configurations. |
| 77 5) If you are compiling libprotobuf and libprotoc as DLLs (see previous |
| 78 section), repeat steps 2 and 3 for the libprotobuf and libprotoc projects. |
| 79 If you are compiling them as static libraries, then you will need to link |
| 80 against the zlib library directly from your own app. |
| 81 6) Edit config.h (in the vsprojects directory) and un-comment the line that |
| 82 #defines HAVE_ZLIB. (Or, alternatively, define this macro via the project |
| 83 settings.) |
| 84 |
| 85 Notes on Compiler Warnings |
| 86 ========================== |
| 87 |
| 88 The following warnings have been disabled while building the protobuf libraries |
| 89 and compiler. You may have to disable some of them in your own project as |
| 90 well, or live with them. |
| 91 |
| 92 C4018 - 'expression' : signed/unsigned mismatch |
| 93 C4146 - unary minus operator applied to unsigned type, result still unsigned |
| 94 C4244 - Conversion from 'type1' to 'type2', possible loss of data. |
| 95 C4251 - 'identifier' : class 'type' needs to have dll-interface to be used by |
| 96 clients of class 'type2' |
| 97 C4267 - Conversion from 'size_t' to 'type', possible loss of data. |
| 98 C4305 - 'identifier' : truncation from 'type1' to 'type2' |
| 99 C4355 - 'this' : used in base member initializer list |
| 100 C4800 - 'type' : forcing value to bool 'true' or 'false' (performance warning) |
| 101 C4996 - 'function': was declared deprecated |
| 102 |
| 103 C4251 is of particular note, if you are compiling the Protocol Buffer library |
| 104 as a DLL (see previous section). The protocol buffer library uses templates in |
| 105 its public interfaces. MSVC does not provide any reasonable way to export |
| 106 template classes from a DLL. However, in practice, it appears that exporting |
| 107 templates is not necessary anyway. Since the complete definition of any |
| 108 template is available in the header files, anyone importing the DLL will just |
| 109 end up compiling instances of the templates into their own binary. The |
| 110 Protocol Buffer implementation does not rely on static template members being |
| 111 unique, so there should be no problem with this, but MSVC prints warning |
| 112 nevertheless. So, we disable it. Unfortunately, this warning will also be |
| 113 produced when compiling code which merely uses protocol buffers, meaning you |
| 114 may have to disable it in your code too. |
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