title: Install Protocol Buffers on Windows
body: <p>I am unable to find clear instructions to install Google Protocol Buffers (including compiler) on Windows x64 platform.</p>
  
  <p>I went through the instructions README file for compiler and source:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>For Compiler: To install, simply place this binary somewhere in your PATH</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>I added system variable to Path: </p>
  
  <pre><code>PROTOC 'C:\dev_tools\protoc-2.4.1-win32'
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I am stuck on installing Protocol Buffers source using Cygwin. I tried following 
  Unix instructions provided in the readme file:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>To build and install the C++ Protocol Buffer runtime and the Protocol
    Buffer compiler (protoc) execute the following:</p>
  
  <pre><code>$ ./configure
  $ make
  $ make check
  $ make install
  </code></pre>
    
    <p>If <code>make check</code> fails, you can still install, but it is likely that
    some features of this library will not work correctly on your system.
    Proceed at your own risk.</p>
    
    <p><code>make install</code> may require superuser privileges.</p>
    
    <p>For advanced usage information on configure and make, see INSTALL.txt.</p>
    
    <p>** Hint on install location **</p>
    
    <p>By default, the package will be installed to /usr/local. However, on many platforms, /usr/local/lib is not part of LD_LIBRARY_PATH. You can add it, but it may be easier to just install to /usr> instead.  To do this, invoke configure as follows:</p>
  
  <pre><code>./configure --prefix=/usr
  </code></pre>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>I get</p>
  
  <pre><code>-bash: ./configure: No such file or directory'
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Can some one provide clear and detailed steps to make this work?</p>
  
  <h1>UPDATE</h1>
  
  <p>I switched to using MSYS/MINGW32 instead and 
  I followed instructions given in this <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9243816/how-to-build-google-protocol-buffers-in-windows-for-mingw">link</a>. Now I am stuck with following:</p>
  
  <p>When I run the './configure' command I get following error:<br>
  <strong>checking how to run the C++ preprocessor... /lib/cpp<br/>
  configure: error: C++ preprocessor "/lib/cpp" fails sanity check'</strong></p>
  
  <p>As a result, none of the make, make install commands work. For eg:</p>
  
  <pre><code>make: No targets specified and no makefile found. Stop.
  </code></pre>