Protocol buffer: does changing field name break the message?
With protocol buffer, does changing field name of a message still let it compatible backward? I couldn't find any cite about that. Eg: original message message Person { required string name = 1; required int32 id = 2; optional string email = 3; } Change to: message Person { required string full_name = 1; required int32 id = 2; optional string email = 3; } Changing a field name will not affected protobuf encoding or compatibility between applications that use proto definitions which differ only by field names. The binary protobuf encoding is based on tag numbers, so that is what you need to