protoc-gen-js: program not found or is not executable

Question

Trying to compile my protos - I need to compile them to use in my react app. But I get this error. I run the command as follows:

cd src/main/proto && protoc -I=. *.proto --js_out=import_style=commonjs:. --grpc-web_out=import_style=commonjs,mode=grpcwebtext:.

Where can I find protoc-gen-js? I didn't come across any repo for it.

Rembrandt

I think that JavaScript code generation is now built-in to protoc. Are you running a recent version of protoc? What does protoc --version yield? See releases. protoc does match e.g. --go_out to protoc-gen-go for external plugins but, it should not need to do this for JavaScript. – Hypochondriac

@Hypochondriac yes, its a recent version, I have this installed libprotoc 3.21.1 – Rembrandt

@Hypochondriac do you know a workaround for this? – Rembrandt

Interesting..... See: Issue #10114 – Hypochondriac

I have protoc 3.19.4 and that includes protoc-gen-js. You could revert to that, or chop through versions to find where it 'broke" (perhaps try 21.0?) – Hypochondriac

Found this too JavaScript support (May 2022). Was trying to understand the change from 3.20 to [4].21 – Hypochondriac

I previously had libprotoc 3.17.1 and it caused the same issue – Rembrandt

@Hypochondriac this issue exists only on Ubuntu - my coworkers who are using windows report no issues – Rembrandt

Answer 1

As of July 2022, there is a known bug in protoc versions 21.1 and 21.2 (and libprotoc 3.21.1 and libprotoc 3.21.2).

See protobuf issue #10114.

For now, recommend downgrading to version 20.1 (libprotoc 3.20.1).

Bossism

indeed, I had the same issue, downgrading solved it – Tacitus

How do I downgrade? – Wadding

Thanks for the link! One year later the issue still isn't fixed though. But for now, it looks that like somebody made the plugin available, so you can install it manually as described in the comments there, which might be a better solution than downgrading. – Carvel

Answer 2

run this command this command will globally install protoc-gen-js

  npm install -g protoc-gen-js

Tiu

Answer 3

For Mac users using brew and the provided link by Christopher Peisert what worked for me was the suggested workaround:

$brew install protobuf@3

$brew link --overwrite protobuf@3

Chiliad

Answer 4

You should install this package globally or in the project devDependencies.

NPM

npm install -g protoc-gen-js
// or
npm install protoc-gen-js --save-dev

YARN

yarn global add protoc-gen-js
// or
yarn add protoc-gen-js --dev

Efface

Answer 5

Can downgrade to @3 versions Please refer https://github.com/grpc/grpc-web/issues/704#issuecomment-1215965557

Aneurysm

While this link may answer the question, it is better to include the essential parts of the answer here and provide the link for reference. Link-only answers can become invalid if the linked page changes. - From Review – Shinto

Answer 6

There has been a lot of discussion on this error in the following issue:

Generate js file from proto file with protoc v21.1 #127

If any of you are open to using a different package for generating static code then you can use the following.

protobufjs-cli

Command line interface (CLI) for protobuf.js.

This can be used to translate between file formats and to generate static code as well as TypeScript definitions.

Installation:

npm i protobufjs-cli

Usage:

$> pbjs -t static-module -w commonjs -o compiled.js file1.proto file2.proto

I started using this package after I got the protoc-gen-js related error when using the protoc compiler for windows. I didn't find any solution mentioned in the issue linked above (as of June 2024) appealing, and I didn't want to install protoc-gen-js globally.

Daltondaltonism