protoc is the compiler for .proto files. It generates language bindings for the messages and/or RPC services from .proto files.
Because protoc is a native executable, the scripts under this directory publish a protoc executable (a.k.a. artifact) to Maven repositories. The artifact can be used by build automation tools so that users would not need to compile and install protoc for their systems.
If you would like us to publish protoc artifact for a new platform, please open an issue to request it.
The published protoc artifacts are available on Maven here:
https://repo.maven.apache.org/maven2/com/google/protobuf/protoc/
The version of the protoc artifact must be the same as the version of the Protobuf project.
The name of a published protoc artifact is in the following format: protoc-<version>-<os>-<arch>.exe, e.g., protoc-3.6.1-linux-x86_64.exe.
Note that artifacts for linux/macos also have the .exe suffix but they are not windows binaries.
Install Apache Maven if you don't have it.
The scripts only work under Unix-like environments, e.g., Linux, MacOSX, and Cygwin or MinGW for Windows. Please see README.md of the Protobuf project for how to set up the build environment.
We have successfully built artifacts on the following environments:
g++-aarch64-linux-gnu on Ubuntu 14.04.5 64-bit