protoc
* Enum values may now have custom options, using syntax similar to field
options.
* Fixed bug where .proto files which use custom options but don't actually
define them (i.e. they import another .proto file defining the options)
had to explicitly import descriptor.proto.
* Adjacent string literals in .proto files will now be concatenated, like in
C.
C++
* Generated message classes now have a Swap() method which efficiently swaps
the contents of two objects.
* All message classes now have a SpaceUsed() method which returns an estimate
of the number of bytes of allocated memory currently owned by the object.
This is particularly useful when you are reusing a single message object
to improve performance but want to make sure it doesn't bloat up too large.
* New method Message::SerializeAsString() returns a string containing the
serialized data. May be more convenient than calling
SerializeToString(string*).
* In debug mode, log error messages when string-type fields are found to
contain bytes that are not valid UTF-8.
* Fixed bug where a message with multiple extension ranges couldn't parse
extensions.
* Fixed bug where MergeFrom(const Message&) didn't do anything if invoked on
a message that contained no fields (but possibly contained extensions).
* Fixed ShortDebugString() to not be O(n^2). Durr.
* Fixed crash in TextFormat parsing if the first token in the input caused a
tokenization error.
Java
* New overload of mergeFrom() which parses a slice of a byte array instead
of the whole thing.
* New method ByteString.asReadOnlyByteBuffer() does what it sounds like.
* Improved performance of isInitialized() when optimizing for code size.
Python
* Corrected ListFields() signature in Message base class to match what
subclasses actually implement.
* Some minor refactoring.
General
* License changed from Apache 2.0 to New BSD.
* It is now possible to define custom "options", which are basically
annotations which may be placed on definitions in a .proto file.
For example, you might define a field option called "foo" like so:
import "google/protobuf/descriptor.proto"
extend google.protobuf.FieldOptions {
optional string foo = 12345;
}
Then you annotate a field using the "foo" option:
message MyMessage {
optional int32 some_field = 1 [(foo) = "bar"]
}
The value of this option is then visible via the message's
Descriptor:
const FieldDescriptor* field =
MyMessage::descriptor()->FindFieldByName("some_field");
assert(field->options().GetExtension(foo) == "bar");
This feature has been implemented and tested in C++ and Java.
Other languages may or may not need to do extra work to support
custom options, depending on how they construct descriptors.
C++
* Fixed some GCC warnings that only occur when using -pedantic.
* Improved static initialization code, making ordering more
predictable among other things.
* TextFormat will no longer accept messages which contain multiple
instances of a singular field. Previously, the latter instance
would overwrite the former.
* Now works on systems that don't have hash_map.
Python
* Strings now use the "unicode" type rather than the "str" type.
String fields may still be assigned ASCII "str" values; they will
automatically be converted.
* Adding a property to an object representing a repeated field now
raises an exception. For example:
# No longer works (and never should have).
message.some_repeated_field.foo = 1
Python tests run correctly even when a previous version of the library is
already installed. I was unable to reproduce his problem on my machine but
the fix seems harmless enough.