Protovend is a tool for managing your vendored protobuf files with ease. Simply install the tool and you can run it like git from the root of the project.

Features

Protovend will 'vendor' another service's protobuf schema files into a local repository, so that they can be used to generate clients for it (using separate codegen tooling that suits the language and libraries in use in the local repository).

• Easier dependency management
• Repository caching and data caching for improved performance.
• Manage and install dependencies from Github.

Example usage

In these examples, we'll be vendoring protos from somegroup/producer-service (a GitHub.com repository) into the local working copy for consumer-service. This will allow us to generate a client for consumer-service to use when talking to the deployed producer-service.

1. protovend init: Preparing a repository to receive vendored files:

   $ protovend init
   (INFO) Created /Users/me/consumer-service/.protovend.yml
   (INFO) Created /Users/me/consumer-service/.protovend.lock
   

2. protovend add: Adding a dependency declaration

   $ protovend add [email protected]:somegroup/producer-service.git
   (INFO) somegroup/producer-service added to protovend metadata
   

3. protovend install: Fetching and vendoring protos from the dependency, and generating a lockfile

   $ protovend install
   (INFO) Fetching latest commit hash from each new repo in github. Current: main@somegroup/producer-service
   (INFO) Fetching proto files from github repos. Current: main@somegroup/producer-service
   (INFO) Next Steps:
   Check the following protovend generated files and vendored proto directory (containing .proto files) into source control
     - .protovend.yml
     - .protovend.lock
     - vendor/proto
   

4. protovend update <repo>: Updating a single dependency

   $ protovend update somegroup/producer-service
   (INFO) Fetching latest commit hash from each new repo in github. Current: main@somegroup/producer-service
   (INFO) Fetching proto files from github repos. Current: main@somegroup/producer-service
   (INFO) Next Steps:
   Check the following protovend generated files and vendored proto directory (containing .proto files) into source control
     - .protovend.yml
     - .protovend.lock
     - vendor/proto
   

5. protovend update: Updating all tracked dependencies to latest

   $ protovend update
   (INFO) Fetching latest commit hash from each new repo in github. Current: main@somegroup/producer-service
   (INFO) Fetching proto files from github repos. Current: main@somegroup/producer-service
   (INFO) Next Steps:
   Check the following protovend generated files and vendored proto directory (containing .proto files) into source control
     - .protovend.yml
     - .protovend.lock
     - vendor/proto
   

Transitive dependencies

Note that transitive dependencies between protobuf schemas are explicitly not supported. That is to say, if your dependencies have their own dependencies on schemas in other repos, you are responsible for resolving them and vendoring each.

This design decision was mainly made to reduce the complexity of the tool, particularly when it comes to understanding versioning and potential version conflicts. Given that deep/complex interdependencies in protobuf schema definitions are likely to be a code smell, we believe that developers should be able to easily resolve their transitive dependencies, and are best placed to do so.

How it works

Protovend looks for a /proto folder in the repository that is being vendored, and copies all *.proto files found into /vendor/proto in the local repository.

When you run protovend in a project it generates a .protovend.yml and .protovend.lock file. These are configuration files that contain all of the information required for vendoring.

Both are designed to be 'human readable' and to be easily edited and required.

.protovend.yml

This file contains a list of services that should be vendored. When protovend add <repo> is run, an entry is added here.

To remove a vendored service the service entry here should be removed.

Example .protovend.yml

min_protovend_version: 1.0.3
vendor:
  - branch: main
    repo: somegroup/producer-service

protovend.lock

This file is generated during protovend install and protovend update operations.

It contains the commit id of the repo during the vendoring process.

Example .protovend.lock

imports:
  - branch: main
    commit: 6931b681ddea94753abb40105672c66d7e08d551
    repo: somegroup/producer-service
min_protovend_version: 1.0.3
updated: 2020-01-01 16:01:24.331398

The only time a commit id is changed is during an update.

./vendor/proto

A directory that contains every protobuf file vendored.

This is wiped and re-generated during every protovend install and protovend update.

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Installation

TODO - once published to brew add steps here

Usage

> protovend --help

Commands:
  add      Add a given git_group/git_repo to projects...
  cleanup  Delete all locally cached repos stored in...
  init     Initialise current directory with protovend...
  install  Install copies of protofiles declared in...
  lint     Lint function to ensure proto files are valid...
  update   Update one or all repos in protovend metadata...

Troubleshooting

Run protovend --help to see all available commands.

You can provide --debug or --info param to see what is happening inside protovend like so:

protovend --debug COMMAND [ARGS]

Developing

Prerequisites

• Rust 1.37, Cargo

Instructions

Build with

cargo build

Coding standards are maintained using the clippy and rustfmt tools. To run locally simply use:

cargo clippy
cargo fmt --all

Attribution

The logo of Protovend is kindly provided by freepik: Food vector created by macrovector - www.freepik.com