process: precompiled protoc-gen-go release binaries

[jgiles]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Currently it can be tricky for teams to ensure they are using consistent versions of protoc-gen-go (the installation instructions on the repo suggest go get -u github.com/golang/protobuf/protoc-gen-go). Version management is particularly important here because protoc-gen-go is often part of build processes which are meant to be reproducible.

Describe the solution you'd like
Pre-compiled, per-platform release binaries, similar to protoc /~https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf/releases or dep /~https://github.com/golang/dep/releases

Describe alternatives you've considered
None.

Additional context
A set of release binaries also makes protoc-gen-go easier to integrate with version-management tooling such as /~https://github.com/asdf-vm/asdf

[dsnet]

I have no objections to this and think its a good idea. It does mean that we'll need to improve our process for tagging and marking new releases on GitHub. I'll look into what it takes to do this, but I'll be honest that this is somewhat of a low priority item at the moment.

[MartinNiederl]

Any updates on this?

[dsnet]

No updates. Pre-compiled binaries requires some more release tooling than we have the bandwidth to work on now. That said, Go 1.12 was recently released, which makes it much easier. Using go1.12, you can do:

GO111MODULE=on go get github.com/golang/protobuf/protoc-gen-go@v1.3.0

[bufdev]

Also of note, as of Golang 1.12, if you have Golang installed, you don't want to edit any go.mod to include golang/protobuf, you can do this (copied from a Makefile):

UNAME_OS := $(shell uname -s)
UNAME_ARCH := $(shell uname -m)

TMP_BASE := .tmp
TMP := $(TMP_BASE)/$(UNAME_OS)/$(UNAME_ARCH)
TMP_BIN = $(TMP)/bin

export GO111MODULE := on
export GOBIN := $(abspath $(TMP_BIN))
export PATH := $(GOBIN):$(PATH)

PROTOC_GEN_GO_VERSION := v1.3.0
PROTOC_GEN_GO := $(TMP_BIN)/protoc-gen-go
$(PROTOC_GEN_GO):
	$(eval PROTOC_GEN_GO_TMP := $(shell mktemp -d))
	@cd $(PROTOC_GEN_GO_TMP); go get github.com/golang/protobuf/protoc-gen-go@$(PROTOC_GEN_GO_VERSION)
	@rm -rf $(PROTOC_GEN_GO_TMP)

You can then call protoc-gen-go within your Makefile as it will be on your PATH (so --go_out will automatically use it).

[dsnet]

Pre-compiled binaries are attached to the release page for v1.20.0 for x86 and amd64 on Linux, OSX, and Windows.