protoc - command line option to override the 'optimize_for' option for a particular run

[noisypants]

Hello,
I'd like to be able to have one proto file that can be optimized for lite runtime or not based on the command line used to generate the code.

use case:

• proto file shared between a java server and a c# client.
• The server doesn't want a lite runtime as it needs reflection
• The client would use the lite runtime as it's resource restricted and doesn't need the reflection apis.

Right now, there are a few options to achieve what i need:

• copy the proto file and stamp in the 'optimize_for' setting that you need and then run protoc on the copy
• run the proto file through a preprocessor before passing to protoc.

My goal would be to not have to edit the proto files in anyway between client and server.

All this is assuming that the serialized formats of the lite runtime vs non-lite runtime are compatible (binary & json).

If there's another way to achieve my goal, please let me know.

Thanks.

[Cloudef]

I would be interested in this as well.

[solicomo]

We also need this feature. Our main use case is similar to @noisypants , but we have others.

1. At the begin of the project we do not need all of the features, such as reflection.
   About half of year latter, we have to switch from lite version to full version.
   But we already have hundreds of .proto files.
   It is too tedious to modify every .proto file.

2. There are several services using the same .proto files, but not all of them need the full features.
   As the full runtime is much bigger than the lite one, the cost of deployment would be pretty high,
   especially since we might deploy them many times everyday.

[Cloudef]

@solicomo it's heavily undocumented (and not sure if generator plugin feature), but you can do --cpp_out=lite:dir nowadays with proto 3

[solicomo]

@Cloudef That should be what I want. Thank you so much!

[xfxyjwf]

This feature is implemented for C++ and mentioned in v3.0.0-beta-3 release note:
https://github.com/google/protobuf/blob/v3.0.0-beta-3/CHANGES.txt#L120

If you are using any version newer than v3.0.0-beta-3, you can use the generator flag as described by @Cloudef to enable lite for C++.