Google Protocol Buffers + Netty support

[trustin]

Hi,

Netty project has pretty good support for Google Protocol Buffers (protobuf). That is, if you describe a message format with a .proto file, protoc (protobuf compiler) will generate some .java files, and then you can write a protobuf-based binary-encoded high-performance client / server appplication very quickly.

The .proto file format is pretty simple and therefore I think a text editor with auto-completion or a visual editor could be implemented and the protoc compiler could be invoked automatically on save to generate .java files. Refactoring like renaming and move (e.g. renaming a message type in .proto removes the old .java file) would be very useful, too.

Also, we could generate some skeletal client / server application based on Netty by right-clicking the .proto file and choose 'Generate Netty application' menu item for example.

Would this be an interesting feature to you? From a network application developer's standpoint, I think this will be cool and attractive.

[maxandersen]

I like the idea and if you know anyone willing to work on it we can easily host and integerate it at jbosstools.

Some of the above are easier than otheres, i.e. calling the compiler should be more or less trivial where as the visual editor and refactoring support is in the high end - but all doable if we can find someone willing to work on it.