I think the entire problem is hard to answer without further investigation. So first I simply want to know how to introspect the problem.

Problem Overview

I use the protoc-gen-bq-schema plugin to assist with converting some large and complex protocol buffer messages into BigQuery schemas.

Until recently, I had an Ubuntu machine. I now have an M3 Mac, the Apple ARM64 chip. I can no longer get the plugin to work, but I can’t manage to introspect the problem: no errors, no messages, nothing. I’m not too savvy with how to use plugins with protoc

I carried over my command history from the previous machine, so I know I used to do exactly the same command that I’ve been trying now. It was fairly simple:

protoc --bq-schema_out . -I <the/path/to/the/proto/package> <the/path/to/the/proto/file/to/generate/the/schema>

After installing protoc, Go, and the protoc-gen-bq-schema plugin on my new computer, I tried that same command, and it returns with absolutely nothing, no input, no errors… nothing.

I tried something available by default with protoc and it works perfectly:

protoc --python_out . -I <the/path/to/the/proto/package> <the/path/to/the/proto/file/to/generate/the/schema>

This generates the protobuf as a Python module, fully functional. So it seems clear that the problem is with the plugin (or with how protoc interacts with the plugin).

I then tried to introspect, to see if I could understand what is going wrong, but I don’t really understand what I can do or how to do it. I tried the following:

> protoc-gen-bq-schema --help

Usage of protoc-gen-bq-schema:
  -alsologtostderr
        log to standard error as well as files
  -log_backtrace_at value
        when logging hits line file:N, emit a stack trace
  -log_dir string
        If non-empty, write log files in this directory
  -logtostderr
        log to standard error instead of files
  -stderrthreshold value
        logs at or above this threshold go to stderr
  -v value
        log level for V logs
  -vmodule value
        comma-separated list of pattern=N settings for file-filtered logging

So I tried to pass some type of logging:

protoc --bq-schema_out .  --bq-schema_opt=-logtostderr <path/to/proto/file/to/generate/schema> -I <path/to/proto/package>

I wasn’t sure if I write --bq-schema_opt=-logtostderr or --bq-schema_opt=logtostderr or --bq-schema_opt=--logtostderr. I tried them all, none worked. I also tried passing the v (verbose) flag, nothing.

It seems as if, even though the protoc-gen-bq-schema file is installed properly and can be called on its own, it isn’t being seen at all by protoc. Or, it could be that the protoc-gen-bq-schema plugin is not working correctly, but it can at least generate its help message.

Request

I don’t think it is possible to understand what is wrong with the plugin itself, but if you could help me understand how I can introspect protoc, that would be great. I cannot get any output regarding what it is doing, so I cannot even begin to guess what I need to do to fix the problem.