Whats the advantage of using pybind11_protobuf over just passing a serialised message string instead?

[indraneelpatil]

Hi!

Thanks for the great work! In my project I need to pass a protobuf message between python and a C++ function installed as a module using pybind. I am just curious as to, for such a scenario why would someone resort to using this instead of just using string arguments?

I am guessing speed could be one factor but how big do the protobuf messages need to be to really make a difference in speed?

Thanks, Indraneel

[rwgk]

It depends on your priorities:

• Fewer dependencies — pybind11_protobuf yes or no

• Intuitive code — how often do you have to pass foo(str(pb)) vs foo(pb), and worse for getting protobufs back from C++

• Runtime performance — incur the overhead for the serialization roundtrips yes or no

Depending on how much weight you put on each, avoiding the pybind11_protobuf dependency might be a good decision, or a non-starter.

[indraneelpatil]

Thanks for the answer! Helps a lot :)