Using ProtoBuf-net with gRPC

Question

I am trying to build a PoC at work that utilizes gRPC. The google document here takes us through a sample application. I was wondering if protobuf-net, and specifically protogen, had the capability to understand service definitions and classes necessary to perform gRPC calls? Or is this something being worked on? Would it work if I use google's protoc for client and server code generation(which involves the service definitions and RPC calls) and protobuf-net for my business objects.

Answer 1

It is something that I would love to get around to, but to date, no: I haven't had need to look into this, and it hasn't hit the top of my backlog. I try and keep an eye on what features people want, so it is good to know that you're after it, but today: no. Mostly this is a time thing - protobuf-net gets progressed out of my free/spare time, unless I have a genuine justification to spend "work time" on it.

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Update: I'm actively talking with the Microsoft folks who are working on gRPC for .NET, and it seems likely that we're going to try to work together here so that this becomes possible with the gRPC things in the .NET Core 3.0 timescale - meaning: we'd share an implementation of the service invocation code, but allow it to work with multiple serializer APIs.