proto3-suite

This package defines tools for working with protocol buffers version 3 in Haskell.

This library provides a higher-level API to the proto3-wire library that supports:

• Type classes for encoding and decoding messages, and instances for all wire formats identified in the specification
• A higher-level approach to encoding and decoding, based on GHC.Generics
• A way of creating .proto files from Haskell types.

See the Proto3.Suite.Tutorial module for more details.

Running the language interop tests

We test inter-language interop using protoc's built-in Python code generation. In order to successfully run these tests, you'll need to install the google protobuf Python library. It's best to create a virtualenv and then use pip to install the right version (virtualenv is a python utility which can be installed with pip).

$ virtualenv pyenv
$ source pyenv/bin/activate
$ pip install protobuf==3.0.0b3  # Need the latest version for the newest protoc

brew install python may also work.

Alternately, the nix-shell environment provides an incremental build environment (but see below for testing). From the root of this repository:

$ nix-shell
[nix-shell]$ cabal configure
[nix-shell]$ cabal build

Once your source code compiles and you want to test, do this instead:

$ nix-shell
[nix-shell]$ cabal configure --enable-tests
[nix-shell]$ cabal build
[nix-shell]$ cabal test

The above steps will work only if your Haskell source compiles, because some of the tests require the current compile-proto-file executable.

compile-proto-file and canonicalize-proto-file installation

Run the following commmand from the root of this repository to install the compile-proto-file and canonicalize-proto-file executables:

$ nix-env --install --attr proto3-suite -f release.nix

To remove it from your nix user profile path, use:

$ nix-env --uninstall proto3-suite

compile-proto-file usage

$ compile-proto-file --help
Compiles a .proto file to a Haskell module

Usage: compile-proto-file --out FILEPATH [--includeDir FILEPATH]...
                          --proto FILEPATH

Available options:
  -h,--help                Show this help text
  --out FILEPATH           Output directory path where generated Haskell modules
                           will be written (directory is created if it does not
                           exist; note that files in the output directory may be
                           overwritten!)
  --includeDir FILEPATH... Path to search for included .proto files (can be
                           repeated, and paths will be searched in order; the
                           current directory is used if this option is not
                           provided)
  --proto FILEPATH         Path to input .proto file

compile-proto-file bases the name (and hence, path) of the generated Haskell module on the filename of the input .proto file, relative to the include path where it was found, snake-to-cameling as needed.

As an example, let's assume this is our current directory structure before performing any code generation:

.
├── my_protos
│   └── my_package.proto
└── other_protos
    └── google
        └── protobuf
            ├── duration.proto
            └── timestamp.proto

where my_package.proto is:

syntax = "proto3";
package some_package_name;
import "google/protobuf/timestamp.proto";
import "google/protobuf/duration.proto";
message MyMessage {
  Timestamp timestamp = 1;
  Duration  duration  = 2;
}

Then, after the following commands:

$ compile-proto-file --out gen --includeDir my_protos --includeDir other_protos --proto google/protobuf/duration.proto
$ compile-proto-file --out gen --includeDir my_protos --includeDir other_protos --proto google/protobuf/timestamp.proto
$ compile-proto-file --out gen --includeDir my_protos --includeDir other_protos --proto my_package.proto

the directory tree will look like this:

.
├── gen
│   ├── Google
│   │   └── Protobuf
│   │       ├── Duration.hs
│   │       └── Timestamp.hs
│   └── MyPackage.hs
├── my_protos
│   └── my_package.proto
└── other_protos
    └── google
        └── protobuf
            ├── duration.proto
            └── timestamp.proto

Finally, note that delimiting . characters in the input .proto basename are treated as / characters, so the input filenames google.protobuf.timestamp.proto and google/protobuf/timestamp.proto would produce the same generated Haskell module name and path.

This is essentially the same module naming scheme as the protoc Python plugin uses when compiling .proto files.