Nothing makes it impossible but comparing it to things like thrift the complexity becomes apparent:
thrift --gen <language> <Thrift filename>
This handles the following languages: C (depends on GLib), Cocoa, C++, C#, D, delphi, Erlang, Go, Haskell, Java, Javascript, OCaml, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Smalltalk. From this one command I can instantly integrate this into almost every build system I know of.
On the other hand gRPC has the same features but it's a slightly different workflow. For each language you go to the language's code generation page, find the command line option for generating your language's code, read up on some decisions that were made for you, etc. All of that is fine, the part that annoys me a bit is each language needs a language module for the compiler (if it's not one of the core few languages). For example in the documentation for generating Go [1] they have you download and install protoc-gen-go from http://github.com/golang/protobuf assuming that you already have golang installed.
gRPC seems much more focused on the idea that I want to define an API for my code, I want that specification to live inside the project that I am writing, and that you can figure out how to generate stubs on a language by language basis.
What I want is something I can write a set of system specification files, type one command and get modules built for all languages. From there I can import those modules using my native language's favorite package manager (npm, composer, Hunter for CMake, etc). Ideally the Protocol Specification, the Library Generation, and the Library Usage are three components that are separate.
With the significant caveat that I haven't used it much myself (I mainly work with Bazel which obviates the need), I think Uber's prototool [0] can manage most if not all of that. Might be worth giving it a look.
On the other hand gRPC has the same features but it's a slightly different workflow. For each language you go to the language's code generation page, find the command line option for generating your language's code, read up on some decisions that were made for you, etc. All of that is fine, the part that annoys me a bit is each language needs a language module for the compiler (if it's not one of the core few languages). For example in the documentation for generating Go [1] they have you download and install protoc-gen-go from http://github.com/golang/protobuf assuming that you already have golang installed.
gRPC seems much more focused on the idea that I want to define an API for my code, I want that specification to live inside the project that I am writing, and that you can figure out how to generate stubs on a language by language basis.
What I want is something I can write a set of system specification files, type one command and get modules built for all languages. From there I can import those modules using my native language's favorite package manager (npm, composer, Hunter for CMake, etc). Ideally the Protocol Specification, the Library Generation, and the Library Usage are three components that are separate.
[1] - https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/docs/referenc...