README.md
1Protocol Buffers - Google's data interchange format
2===================================================
3
4[](https://travis-ci.org/google/protobuf) [](https://ci.appveyor.com/project/protobuf/protobuf)
5
6Copyright 2008 Google Inc.
7
8https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/
9
10Overview
11--------
12
13Protocol Buffers (a.k.a., protobuf) are Google's language-neutral,
14platform-neutral, extensible mechanism for serializing structured data. You
15can find [protobuf's documentation on the Google Developers site](https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/).
16
17This README file contains protobuf installation instructions. To install
18protobuf, you need to install the protocol compiler (used to compile .proto
19files) and the protobuf runtime for your chosen programming language.
20
21Protocol Compiler Installation
22------------------------------
23
24The protocol compiler is written in C++. If you are using C++, please follow
25the [C++ Installation Instructions](src/README.md) to install protoc along
26with the C++ runtime.
27
28For non-C++ users, the simplest way to install the protocol compiler is to
29download a pre-built binary from our release page:
30
31 [https://github.com/google/protobuf/releases](https://github.com/google/protobuf/releases)
32
33In the downloads section of each release, you can find pre-built binaries in
34zip packages: protoc-$VERSION-$PLATFORM.zip. It contains the protoc binary
35as well as a set of standard .proto files distributed along with protobuf.
36
37If you are looking for an old version that is not available in the release
38page, check out the maven repo here:
39
40 [http://repo1.maven.org/maven2/com/google/protobuf/protoc/](http://repo1.maven.org/maven2/com/google/protobuf/protoc/)
41
42These pre-built binaries are only provided for released versions. If you want
43to use the github master version at HEAD, or you need to modify protobuf code,
44or you are using C++, it's recommended to build your own protoc binary from
45source.
46
47If you would like to build protoc binary from source, see the [C++ Installation
48Instructions](src/README.md).
49
50Protobuf Runtime Installation
51-----------------------------
52
53Protobuf supports several different programming languages. For each programming
54language, you can find instructions in the corresponding source directory about
55how to install protobuf runtime for that specific language:
56
57| Language | Source |
58|--------------------------------------|-------------------------------------------------------|
59| C++ (include C++ runtime and protoc) | [src](src) |
60| Java | [java](java) |
61| Python | [python](python) |
62| Objective-C | [objectivec](objectivec) |
63| C# | [csharp](csharp) |
64| JavaNano | [javanano](javanano) |
65| JavaScript | [js](js) |
66| Ruby | [ruby](ruby) |
67| Go | [golang/protobuf](https://github.com/golang/protobuf) |
68| PHP | TBD |
69
70
71Usage
72-----
73
74The complete documentation for Protocol Buffers is available via the
75web at:
76
77 https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/
78
){kind=link}