Hi everybody, today I show you a way to install Google Protocol Buffers on MAC OS. You might already have tried:

brew install protobuf and hit by an error like this:

Error: The brew link step did not complete successfully The formula built, but is not symlinked into /usr/local Could not symlink include/google /usr/local/include is not writable.

Again you may have tried brew link protobuf which could probably lead to this: Error: Could not symlink include/google/usr/local/include is not writable. And may be more… But if you still can’t get the luck. Then follow the steps below to install Google Protocol Buffers. The choice of version totally depends on you, but we will proceed with the version 3.6.1.

1) Go to protobuf releases and download the pre built binaries of your choice. For example, the latest 3.6.1 versions are 32 bit and 64 bit.

2) Extract the binaries in a folder named protoc-3. Copy and paste this folder to the Library folder.

3) Open Terminal and execute this command: touch ~/.bash_profile

4) Now execute this: open ~/.bash_profile

Note: Enter password of your Mac OS account in the popup window.

5) Add these two lines to the file and save it.

PATH="/Library/protoc-3/bin:${PATH}" PATH="/Library/protoc-3/include:${PATH}"

6) Close the terminal to refresh the settings and reopen it using command + Space key.

7) Now check the update PATH by using this command.

echo $PATH

8) If nothing happend wrong, you will see this added to your PATH:

/Library/protoc-3/include:/Library/protoc-3/bin:

9) Now check the installed version and execute:

protoc --version

10) You will see this libprotoc 3.6.1, Congratulations! you have now protobuff ready!.