protoc-gen-debug

protoc-gen-debug

When developing a protoc plugin, it is difficult to use debug mode (breakpoint) because of the way protoc communicates with the plugin.

To debug, you need to pseudo-mimic protoc's input, which is hard to do because protoc and plugin communicate in protobuf, a format that is hard for humans to read.

This plugin helps you dump protoc's input so you can use it to develop other plugins.

Installation

You can install it from the Github Release or with the command below.

go install github.com/pubg/protoc-gen-debug

Example

Dump protoc's input

protoc \
    --debug_out=./ \
    --debug_opt=dump_binary=true \
    --debug_opt=dump_json=true \
    --debug_opt=file_binary=request.pb.bin \
    --debug_opt=file_json=request.pb.json \
    --debug_opt=parameter=expose_all=true:foo=bar \
    -I ./ \
    ./example.proto

Run your plugin with the dumped input via command-line

cat request.pb.bin | ./protoc-gen-myplugin
cat request.pb.bin | go run ./cmd/main.go

Run your plugin with the dumped input via Goland

1. Check Redirect input from
2. Set dumped file path
3. Run as Debug Mode
4. Happy Debugging!

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