protobuf-c/protobuf-c

Health v2 · maintenance only

Flags: no_license

Adoption not part of the score

2988 stars · 771 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded

A pure C implementation of Google's Protocol Buffers data serialization format, including libprotobuf-c for encoding/decoding and protoc-gen-c, a code generator plugin for protoc. It lets C programs serialize and deserialize structured messages defined in .proto files.

Use cases

• serialize structured data in C programs
• generate C code from .proto files
• decode protobuf messages in embedded C applications
• exchange protobuf-encoded data between C and other languages
• implement binary message formats without writing manual parsers

When to choose

• you need Protocol Buffers support in pure C without C++ runtime dependencies
• you are building embedded or low-level systems that consume protobuf messages
• you want protoc-generated C descriptors and accessors for your .proto schemas

When to avoid

• you are working in C++ and can use the official protobuf C++ library
• you need RPC support, which was split out into protobuf-c-rpc
• you need a language with first-party protobuf support like Go, Java, or Python

Facets

library · maturity stable

serialization parser developer-tools apis files windows cross-platform c cpp protocol-buffers protobuf code-generation c-library linux macos

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