Will motoko canister/dfx support protobuf?

[icme]

@claudio ran into this recently trying to fetch subnet information from the nns registry canister

Candid equivalents for protobuf endpoints on the nns registry canister?

I’m looking to replicate some of the ic-admin tool functionalities from a canister, to eliminate the need to run off-chain crons to collect various data. Specifically, the get-subnet-list and get-subnet commands. I noticed that the ic-admin tool calls a get_value endpoint on the registry canister that accepts different keys, but that this endpoint’s arguments are protobuf encoded, and the endpoint isn’t explicitly documented in the candid. Are there any plans to expose open candid interfaces …

Looks like there may have been some ideas to implement this on the canister level in 2022, but not sure if that went anywhere…

How to get protobuf messsages from ic?

We’ve talked some about a protobuf library for motoko, but the general consensus has been to migrate toward candid and add candid interfaces for the few protobuf functions that are out there. I don’t understand the slowness in adding these endpoints, but hopefully they are coming soon. The big outstanding ones that I know about are: Ledger -getting Block detail -getting archive index Ledger Archive -getting Block detail Governance -getting the XDR ratio