As you note, you can't iterate over all compiled-in protos. However, if you can collect a set of "root" protos that you care about, it's easy to traverse down the tree to collect all their dependencies.
In general, trying to enumerate "everything that is linked in" tends to lead to trouble. The linker may drop things that it thinks are unused. Technically the C++ standard does not even require initializers to be run until the first time their translation unit is accessed, although most compilers run all initializers at startup. It can also be confusing if linking in a new library causes behavioral changes in unrelated parts of your program. I actually wish that we had never introduced the singleton generated_pool in the C++ library since it creates so much confusion -- the Java protobuf library has no central registry, and this avoids a lot of problems. On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 9:42 AM, Oren Shemesh <shemesh.o...@gmail.com>wrote: > Hello, > > My executable is composed of multiple .proto files, some of them > importing others. > I would like the executable to communicate with a generic program > (Which is compiled once and does not change), using protobuf messages. > So, I need the generic program to get the descriptors of messages used > in the communication at run-time, from my executable. > I understand that to do this, I need the executable to create a > FileDescriptorSet containing all the files needed to describe a > certain message, serialize this set, pass it to my generic program, > which will then create a descriptor pool and feed it with the > deserialized FileDescriptorSet. Now that I have this populated pool, > the generic program can find any descriptor by it's name, as > communicated from the executable. > > My question is: Is there a method to automatically create the file > descriptor set of all files used inside a given application, in proper > topological order (i.e. imported files appearing before files > depending on them) ? > I know that protoc can create such a set, but this set reflects the > set of files used in a single protoc run, and my application has > multiple files. > I thought about iterating all descriptors found in the generated_pool, > gathering the set of files, sorting them and creating this set, but > there is no way to iterate all descriptors in the pool. > It seems to me that in order to gather all file descriptor protos used > in my executable, I need to manually define a single .proto file > importing all other files, but I do not like this idea because it > means taht every time I add a new .proto file to my application, this > 'master proto' file needs to be updated. > (Yes, the build system could do it automatically). > > Is there a better way ? > > Thanks, Oren. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Protocol Buffers" group. > To post to this group, send email to protobuf@googlegroups.com. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > protobuf+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/protobuf?hl=en. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Protocol Buffers" group. To post to this group, send email to protobuf@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to protobuf+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/protobuf?hl=en.
