Why do I get: "--grpc_out: protoc-gen-grpc: The system cannot find the path specified." message?

Question

I am following this C# Quickstart tutorial for gRPC. I have come to this step where I have to use the following command to generate gRPC code:

%UserProfile%\.nuget\packages\Grpc.Tools.1.15.0\tools\windows_x86\protoc.exe -I../../protos --csharp_out Greeter --grpc_out Greeter ../../protos/helloworld.proto --plugin=protoc-gen-grpc=%UserProfile%\.nuget\packages\packages\Grpc.Tools.1.15.0\tools\windows_x86\grpc_csharp_plugin.exe

It doesn't work and what I get in the terminal after running commands above is this:

--grpc_out: protoc-gen-grpc: The system cannot find the path specified.

I don't know why the system cannot find the path since I have changed the path in the command so that it points to the files which need to be executed.

Answer 1

Can you try passing an absolute path to --plugin=protoc-gen-grpc=?

Answer 2

I considered the answer by Michael. However, using a different user account was not an option and I couldn't rename my user account since it's an Azure AD user and as such does not have an entry in the Windows list of local users where I would change its folder location in the registry.

The work-around that did it for me was to change the location of the global packages folder.

Answer 3

I ran into the same problem, and with this error "path not found" and your name containing special characters as well, I suspected an issue with non ASCII paths! It happened that my windows username had a special character "ë" in it

You should create a github issue, but here are some quick fixes:

2 solutions here to fix the issue

1. Create a new user without special characters and use this account
2. Harder and dangerous path, but what I've done myself: rename your user account to remove special characters using the following method https://winaero.com/blog/rename-user-profile-folder-windows-10/

Answer 4

I had the same error because had cyrillyc symbols in my user folder. Solved by changing path to global nuget packages in nuget file config (for Windows: %appdata%\NuGet\NuGet.config):

<configuration>
  <config>
    <add key="globalPackagesFolder" value="D:\.nuget\packages" />
  </config>
</configuration>

Instead of D:\.nuget\packages you can set any path without wrong symbols