Protobuf: protoc-gen-go: protoc fails to compile in Windows

[Soumil07]

What version of protobuf and what language are you using?
Version: 1.3.0

What did you do?
I tried building a proto file using protoc. I have protoc-gen-go installed and %GOPATH%/bin in my PATH environment variable.

What did you expect to see?
A built .pb.go file.

What did you see instead?
an error message: The system cannot find the path specified. --go_out: protoc-gen-go: Plugin failed with status code 1.

here's the command i ran:
protoc -I %USERPROFILE%/Documents/Projects/go/gateway/protobuf --go_out=plugins=grpc:%GOPATH%/bin/protoc-gen-go %USERPROFILE%/Documents/Projects/go/gateway/protobuf/protobuf.proto

[dsnet]

Unfortunately, none of the core developers develop on windows, so we are unable to help directly. Marking this as "help-wanted" if someone in the community wants to help answer your question and/or fix protoc-gen-go to work on Windows.

[puellanivis]

I would expect your command-line should look something like: protoc -I %USERPROFILE%/Documents/Projects/go/gateway/protobuf --go_out=plugins=grpc:%OUTPUT_DIRECTORY% %USERPROFILE%/Documents/Projects/go/gateway/protobuf/protobuf.proto

Where %OUTPUT_DIRECTORY% is set to whatever is meaningful for your case (likely %USERPROFILE%/Documents/Projects/go/gateway/protobuf/)

I would much more preferably suggest that you run protoc from the directory directly rather than using complicated paths, that may contain spaces, or the : character, which one of the binaries might feasibly misunderstand. So: protoc -I protobuf/ --go_out=plugins=grpc:protobuf/ protobuf/protobuf.proto

[fearofcode]

In case it's useful information, I successfully ran the Go examples from the tutorials on Windows 10, Go 1.11.4, protoc 3.8.0-rc1, and the latest version of protoc-gen-go (1.3.1 as of this writing, I suppose) today.

[timestee]

same issue, using Windows Subsystem for Linux now.

[dsnet]

It seems to me that this is a user-configuration error. If protoc can't find the protoc-gen-go binary, then somethings up with the PATH in Windows. I don't think there's anything actionable for us to do on our end.

[alokverma75]

Try to install additional packages for Golang other than Go:
Golang packages:

go get -u github.com/golang/protobuf/protoc-gen-go
go get -u github.com/golang/protobuf/proto
you can run this from any directory and it will install packages to somewhere:
C:UsersDellgobin
Add this to PATH from Environment variables in Windows and then it will be OK

[tandr]

We have the same problem now all of a sudden -- and we are using gradle (don't ask) to build with protoc-gen-go. Suddenly we have same issue on Windows on one particular build machine. I will figure it out, but would be nice to know that ".exe" is added to a plugin file name resolution on Windows anyway, even when it is invoked from cygwin

[tandr]

Alrighty... So found the culprit. Please don't laugh.

Gradle extracts protoc-gen-go plugin into some cache path, and it is quite long. As of today, together with file name itself it just crossed 256 path length.

I guess protoc 3.10 still cannot call a plugin sitting THAT(/s) deep in a path on Windows.

Welcome to 2020... 🤦‍♂

[puellanivis]

MAX_PATH we meet again. :squint:

[itcuihao]

go version go1.13 windows/amd64

➜  protobuf (master) go install -v ./...
github.com/golang/protobuf/protoc-gen-go/generator/internal/remap
github.com/golang/protobuf/protoc-gen-go/descriptor
github.com/golang/protobuf/ptypes/wrappers
github.com/golang/protobuf/proto/test_proto
github.com/golang/protobuf/ptypes/empty
github.com/golang/protobuf/jsonpb/jsonpb_test_proto
github.com/golang/protobuf/descriptor
github.com/golang/protobuf/protoc-gen-go/plugin
github.com/golang/protobuf/proto/proto3_proto
github.com/golang/protobuf/protoc-gen-go/generator
github.com/golang/protobuf/protoc-gen-go/grpc
github.com/golang/protobuf/protoc-gen-go
go install github.com/golang/protobuf/protoc-gen-go: mkdir D:\mygo\bin;C:: The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect.

[autocorrectoff]

i'm on win10 and my issue was that after installing google.golang.org/grpc, which also installs github.com/golang/protobuf, protoc-gen-go.exe did not get build in GOPATH/bin. so running go get -u github.com/golang/protobuf/protoc-gen-go did the job and now protoc dir_name/whatever_name.proto --go_out=plugins=grpc:. does the job

[Sreezz]

I am tring to install protoc-gen-go in windows10 64bit. while run go get -u github.com/golang/protobuf/protoc-gen-go , getting following error

unrecognized import path "google.golang.org/protobuf/compiler/protogen
unrecognized import path "google.golang.org/protobuf/types/descriptorpb
unrecognized import path "google.golang.org/protobuf/cmd/protoc-gen-go/internal_gengo

what is the reason for this? pleas help me on this

sree