Protoc does not provide a dependency manifest output file for build tools like make

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Protobuf files can have import statements and include directories, so the full 
dependency tree is not known by the build system before executing protoc. This 
makes it hard for the build system to know when to schedule any given protoc 
command.
Make & other build systems can use a dependency file to trigger a rebuild when 
a dependency changes. GCC and other compilers expose this with the -MF flag, 
which outputs a file in the format

output_filename: input_file \
 input_file2 \
 input_file3
...

Protobuf knows the transitive set of input files, but doesn't expose this 
information in this format.

Patch to follow.

Original issue reported on code.google.com by richardg...@gmail.com on 21 Jan 2015 at 11:58

[GoogleCodeExporter]

this is what we're using - maybe can be built upon:

https://github.com/machinekit/machinekit/blob/master/src/machinetalk/proto/scrip
ts/protoc-gen-depends

Original comment by haberl...@gmail.com on 22 Jan 2015 at 4:23

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Hi, could you help file this issue on github? We have moved to github not very 
long ago: https://github.com/google/protobuf

If you have a patch to add this feature to protoc, feel free to send us the 
patch in a pull request.

Original comment by xiaof...@google.com on 23 Jan 2015 at 12:33

• Changed state: WontFix

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Sure! Done. Link: https://github.com/google/protobuf/pull/178

Original comment by richardg...@gmail.com on 23 Jan 2015 at 5:55