Protocol buffers in C# projects using protobuf-net - best practices for code generation

Question

I\'m trying to use protobuf in a C# project, using protobuf-net, and am wondering what is the best way to organise this into a Visual Studio project structure.

When manu

Answer 1

Add the following pre-build event to your project settings to generate the C# file only when the .proto file has changed. Just replace YourFile with the name of base name of your .proto file.

cd $(ProjectDir) && powershell -Command if (!(Test-Path YourFile.proto.cs) -or (Get-Item YourFile.proto).LastWriteTimeUtc -gt (Get-Item YourFile.proto.cs).LastWriteTimeUtc) { PathToProtoGen\protogen -i:YourFile.proto -o:YourFile.proto.cs }

This works in any recent version of Visual Studio, unlike the protobuf-net Custom-Build tool, which does not support Visual Studio 2012 or Visual Studio 2013, according to issues 338 and 413.