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Document use of the build plugin
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Motivation:

To ease use of the `grpc-swift-protobuf` Swift Package Manager build
plugin.

Modifications:

Documentation added.

Result:

Greater understanding?
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rnro committed Jan 23, 2025
1 parent 5e92f64 commit 6cb362c
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96 changes: 92 additions & 4 deletions Sources/GRPCCore/Documentation.docc/Articles/Generating-stubs.md
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Expand Up @@ -4,8 +4,6 @@ Learn how to generate stubs for gRPC Swift from a service defined using the Prot

## Overview

### Using protoc

If you've used Protocol Buffers before then generating gRPC Swift stubs should be simple. If you're
unfamiliar with Protocol Buffers then you should get comfortable with the concepts before
continuing; the [Protocol Buffers website](https://protobuf.dev/) is a great place to start.
Expand All @@ -16,7 +14,17 @@ The [`grpc-swift-protobuf`](https://github.com/grpc/grpc-swift-protobuf) package
> `protoc-gen-grpc-swift` only generates gRPC stubs, it doesn't generate messages. You must use
> `protoc-gen-swift` to generate messages in addition to gRPC Stubs.
To generate gRPC stubs for your `.proto` files you must run the `protoc` command with
The protoc plugin can be used from the command line directly, passed to `protoc`, or
you can make use of a convenience which adds the stub generation to the Swift build graph.
The automatic gRPC Swift stub generation makes use of a [Swift Package Manager build plugin](
https://github.com/swiftlang/swift-package-manager/blob/main/Documentation/Plugins.md) to use the
`.proto` files as inputs to the build graph, input them into `protoc` using `protoc-gen-grpc-swift`
and `protoc-gen-swift` as needed, and make the resulting gRPC Swift stubs available to code
against without committing them as source. The build plugin may be invoked either from the command line or from Xcode.

### Using protoc

To generate gRPC stubs for your `.proto` files directly you must run the `protoc` command with
the `--grpc-swift_out=<DIRECTORY>` option:

```console
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -69,7 +77,7 @@ allows you to specify a mapping from `.proto` files to the Swift module they are
allows the code generator to add appropriate imports to your generated stubs. This is described in
more detail in the [SwiftProtobuf documentation](https://github.com/apple/swift-protobuf/blob/main/Documentation/PLUGIN.md).

#### Building the plugin
#### Building the protoc plugin

> The version of `protoc-gen-grpc-swift` you use mustn't be newer than the version of
> the `grpc-swift-protobuf` you're using.
Expand All @@ -83,3 +91,83 @@ swift build --product protoc-gen-grpc-swift

This command will build the plugin into `.build/debug` directory. You can get the full path using
`swift build --show-bin-path`.

## Using the build plugin

The build plugin (`GRPCProtobufGenerator`) is a great choice for convenient dynamic code generation, however it does come with some limitations.
Because it generates the gRPC Swift stubs as part of the build it has the requirement that `protoc` must be guaranteed
to be available at compile time. Also because of a limitation of Swift Package Manager build plugins, the plugin
will only be invoked when applied to the source contained in a leaf package, so it is not useful for generating code for
library authors.

The build plugin will detect `.proto` files in the source tree and perform one invocation of `protoc` for each file
(caching results and performing the generation as necessary).

### Adoption
Swift Package Manager build plugins must be adopted on a per-target basis, you can do this by modifying your
package manifest (`Package.swift` file). You will need to declare the `grpc-swift-protobuf` package as a package
dependency and then add the plugin to any desired targets.

For example, to make use of the plugin for generating gRPC Swift stubs as part of the
`plugin-adopter` target:
```swift
targets: [
.executableTarget(
name: "plugin-adopter",
dependencies: [
// ...
],
plugins: [
.plugin(name: "GRPCProtobufGenerator", package: "grpc-swift-protobuf")
]
)
]
```
Once this is done you need to ensure that that the `.proto` files to be used for generation
are included in the target's source directory (below relevant the `Source` directory) and that you have
defined at least one configuration file.

### Configuration

The build plugin requires a configuration file to be present in a directory which encloses all `.proto` files
(in the same directory or a parent).
Configuration files are JSON which tells the build plugin about the options which will be used in the
invocations of `protoc`. Configuration files must be named `grpc-swift-proto-generator-config.json`
and have the following format:
```json
{
"generate": {
"clients": true,
"servers": true,
"messages": true,
},
"generatedSource": {
"accessLevelOnImports": false,
"accessLevel": "internal",
}
"protoc": {
"executablePath": "/opt/homebrew/bin/protoc"
"importPaths": [
"../directory_1",
],
},
}
```

The options do not need to be specified and each have default values.

| Name | Possible Values | Default | Description |
|----------------------------------------|--------------------------------------------|--------------------------------------|----------------------------------------------------------|
| `generate.servers` | `true`, `false` | `True` | Generate server stubs |
| `generate.clients` | `true`, `false` | `True` | Generate client stubs |
| `generate.messages` | `true`, `false` | `True` | Generate message stubs |
| `generatedSource.accessLevelOnImports` | `true`, `false` | `false` | Whether imports should have explicit access levels |
| `generatedSource.accessLevel` | `public`, `package`, `internal` | `internal` | Access level for generated stubs |
| `protoc.executablePath` | N/A | N/A (attempted discovery) | Path to the `protoc` executable |
| `protoc.importPaths` | N/A | Directory containing the config file | Access level for generated stubs |

Many of these map to `protoc-gen-grpc-swift` and `protoc-gen-swift` options.

If you require greater flexibility you may specify more than one configuration file.
Configuration files apply to all `.proto` files equal to or below it in the file hierarchy. A configuration file
lower in the file hierarchy supersedes one above it.

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