Could NOT find Protobuf (missing: Protobuf_PROTOC_EXECUTABLE)

Question

When I am doing a cmake in the build directory of the project I am getting this error. Initially I got a

protobuf-config.cmake not found

error. So I gave a path of the protobuf-config.cmake file to Protobuf_DIR. Later it started to show this new error:

CMake Error at /opt/cmake/share/cmake-3.13/Modules/FindPackageHandleStandardArgs.cmake:137 (message): Could NOT find Protobuf (missing: Protobuf_PROTOC_EXECUTABLE)

(found suitable version "3.6.1", minimum required is "3.0.0")

I am also attaching the error log file: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1y7BZ6lDBtxvla7r-o188xM_FjwLqwhCx

I am doing this on Ubuntu-18 with cmake version: 3.13 and protobuf version: 3.6.1

Answer 1

You probably don't have the Protobuf compiler and development files installed. To fix that, run this command:

sudo apt-get install protobuf-compiler libprotobuf-dev

Alternatively, if you're building Protobuf by hand, you can't build it with the build type as RelWithDebInfo because that causes issues with the library and CMake.

Answer 2

Hy,

list your protobuf libraries with sudo apt list | grep protobuf it should tell you what it will install by default. Run protoc --version so that you see what is recognized by default now. And after that get a version from github if needed build it and install it (this should not take to long). Then run protoc --version again.

Answer 3

Default repositories usually contain outdated protobuf version. It is best to install it manually, from sources:

git clone --progress -b v3.10.0 https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf && \
    ( \
      cd protobuf; \
      mkdir build; \
      cd build; \
      cmake ../cmake \
        -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release \
        -Dprotobuf_BUILD_SHARED_LIBS=ON \
        -Dprotobuf_BUILD_TESTS=OFF; \
      make -j4 install; \
    ) && \
    rm -rf protobuf

Answer 4

Installed from apt on Ubuntu 20.04, dont have permissions to /usr/include/google

To fix: sudo chmod +Xr -R /usr/include/google

Answer 5

Quickly adding here that after installing Protobuf following this answer, I had to delete the build folder in my workspace to get cmake to run without this error :)