My goal is to port Google's libphonenumber to java-me, so I can use it on a BlackBerry. The current subgoal is to get a Protocol Buffer compiler for java-me that is suitable for porting libphonenumber. There are four existing libraries mentioned on the wiki. I've tried two of them that appeared to have recent development, but ran into trouble.
protobuf-j2me on Google Code required a significant number of extra tools to be installed just to build it. Since I am willing to use java to target java-me, I was a little put off by the requirement to use python, and install a whole tool management system in the form of 'gyp' I wasn't able to successfully build this project on my windows box. protobuf-j2me on github. It appears this is the same as the other protobuf-j2me listed above. Why are both listed on the wiki? protobuf-javame on Google Code appears to be a pure java implementation. I was able to run the compiler on my windows box, but it doesn't support comments or default values in the .proto file, I get the impression that those are more recent additions to the protocol buffers spec. After pruning those parts out of the libphonenumber proto files, I also found that this compiler doesn't offer a way to copy protocol buffer message objects, and all the fields are immutable. Both of those conflict with libphonenumber's use of protocolbuffer messages. I looked at fixing the parser to support more recent versions of protocol buffers, but discovered it was primarily driven by inscrutable regex patterns. swingme on Sourceforge appeared a little too generic to me. It says "This is a 'bastardized' version of Google Protocol Buffers that allows for Anonymous Objects." so I didn't even try it, since I want to use the real thing. It looks like I need to write my own java-me target for Protocol Buffers. I would like it to be a self contained java codebase, so it seems antlr + stringtemplate are the right tools here. I am looking for a EBNF style specification of the .proto file, but I can't seem to find one. I see the documentation, which covers many examples, but I want an actual spec for the file. I found some pretty detailed information on this prolog page -- http://www.swi-prolog.org/pldoc/package/protobufs.html -- a lot of the text appears to have been written by Google in fact. There are referenced to the protocol buffers spec, too. But I am having trouble finding something similar on the protocol buffers site. So where do I find the spec? -- 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.
