I'm new to C++ and I'm writing a simple program that uses protobuf definitions (.proto) as part of its work. I come from C# and had a lot of trouble understanding how to use protobuf in my VC++ project. Please excuse the long and detailed post, I have spent several hours trying to make this work, to no avail.
Following an online tutorial I got VS to automatically parse and generate H/CPP files from PROTO files with nothing but protoc.exe. Syntax highlighting even works and gives me nice colors in the IDE. Hooray!
"$(ProjectDir)../dependencies/protobuf/bin/protoc.exe" --proto_path=$(ProjectDir) --cpp_out=$(ProjectDir) %(FullPath)
However, the generated headerfiles have a lot of dependencies on other headers and inc files that I did not expect I would need (i thought I could just get around by using protoc.exe and that it would generate self-contained header files)
#include "google/protobuf/port_undef.inc"
#include "google/protobuf/io/coded_stream.h"
#include "google/protobuf/arena.h"
#include "google/protobuf/arenastring.h"
#include "google/protobuf/generated_message_tctable_decl.h"
#include "google/protobuf/generated_message_util.h"
...
I added the whole Protobuf release (downloaded from their github page as their instructions specify) to a nice /dependencies folder and added it as part of my "additional include directories". Now my generated files can find their dependencies... but then I hit a wall again.
Protobuf source files includes a header that is, as far as i can tell, nowhere to be found in the protobuf release. I just don't have it!
#include "absl/strings/string_view.h" // < !!!
So I hack another thing ontop of this stuff by downloading google/absl and putting it in dependencies aswell, in additional includes; Now I can compile, but I can't link, because I'm missing protobuf.lib which I thought would be part of the release somewhere.... but it's not. I had no intention of compiling protobuf myself, I trust the developers and I just wanted to use a binary. Even if I did want to build it myself, the steps I followed feel extra convoluted and I'm not sure what I was supposed to do.
Before hacking yet another thing on top of all this to make it work I thought I'd better ask here to make sure I'm doing this the normal, intended way - Yes, I have read the protobuf README as well as their website which is not an install guide and further redirects to the github readme anyway. VCPKG did not work for me.
Was this missing dependency normal and was I supposed to patch it by hand by fetching it myself on the internet the way I did, or was it supposed to be included/found elsewhere/part of something else that I missed?
Is this the normal way to install and use Protobuf, or is there supposed to be an automated way that will mostly work for a Windows VC++ setup and I made my life more complicated than necessary?
Sorry in advance if those are naive questions, I'm trying to learn what is the proper way to install protobuf in a C++ project and I stumble upon a lot of conflicting or incomplete information.