protoc

80.4K downloads in the last 30 days (2.7K/day), up 35% from the previous period.

210 crates depend on protoc. Reasonable ecosystem adoption, though not yet a core dependency.

The API has been stable (1.x) for over 8 years with 87 releases. This level of maturity means you can depend on it without worrying about breaking changes.

Only 2 direct dependencies. Lean dependency tree means faster builds and lower supply chain risk.

At 5KB, protoc is lightweight. Small crate size correlates with focused, well-scoped functionality.

Notable dependents include protoc-rust, protoc-grpcio, protoc-rust-grpc, traefikctl, solana_libra_grpcio-client. When high-quality crates choose protoc, it's a strong quality signal.