protobuf 消息升级 && 动态proto

https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/docs/cpptutorial?hl=zh-CN

Extending a Protocol Buffer

Sooner or later after you release the code that uses your protocol buffer, you will undoubtedly want to "improve" the protocol buffer's definition. If you want your new buffers to be backwards-compatible, and your old buffers to be forward-compatible – and you almost certainly do want this – then there are some rules you need to follow. In the new version of the protocol buffer:

• you must not change the tag numbers of any existing fields.
• you must not add or delete any required fields.
• you may delete optional or repeated fields.
• you may add new optional or repeated fields but you must use fresh tag numbers (i.e. tag numbers that were never used in this protocol buffer, not even by deleted fields).

(There are some exceptions to these rules, but they are rarely used.)

If you follow these rules, old code will happily read new messages and simply ignore any new fields. To the old code, optional fields that were deleted will simply have their default value, and deleted repeated fields will be empty. New code will also transparently read old messages. However, keep in mind that new optional fields will not be present in old messages, so you will need to either check explicitly whether they're set with has_, or provide a reasonable default value in your .proto file with [default = value] after the tag number. If the default value is not specified for an optional element, a type-specific default value is used instead: for strings, the default value is the empty string. For booleans, the default value is false. For numeric types, the default value is zero. Note also that if you added a new repeated field, your new code will not be able to tell whether it was left empty (by new code) or never set at all (by old code) since there is no has_ flag for it.

from http://www.cnblogs.com/stephen-liu74/archive/2013/01/02/2841485.html

七、Protocol Buffer消息升级原则。

      在实际的开发中会存在这样一种应用场景，既消息格式因为某些需求的变化而不得不进行必要的升级，但是有些使用原有消息格式的应用程序暂时又不能被立刻升级，这便要求我们在升级消息格式时要遵守一定的规则，从而可以保证基于新老消息格式的新老程序同时运行。规则如下：
      1. 不要修改已经存在字段的标签号。
      2. 任何新添加的字段必须是optional和repeated限定符，否则无法保证新老程序在互相传递消息时的消息兼容性。
      3. 在原有的消息中，不能移除已经存在的required字段，optional和repeated类型的字段可以被移除，但是他们之前使用的标签号必须被保留，不能被新的字段重用。
      4. int32、uint32、int64、uint64和bool等类型之间是兼容的，sint32和sint64是兼容的，string和bytes是兼容的，fixed32和sfixed32，以及fixed64和sfixed64之间是兼容的，这意味着如果想修改原有字段的类型时，为了保证兼容性，只能将其修改为与其原有类型兼容的类型，否则就将打破新老消息格式的兼容性。

      5. optional和repeated限定符也是相互兼容的。。。

http://www.searchtb.com/2012/09/protocol-buffers.html