REPROTO-INSTANTIATE-SCHEMA(1)

okay so bestie 💖 welcome to the reproto-instantiate-schema(1) manual — yes, that's the manual name up top, and the header is giving User Commands realness. This tool is a little generator with main character energy: it reads a compiled .desc FileDescriptorSet and pops out pseudo-random binary protobuf instances. Slay. Let's go. ✨

💖 NAME 💖

reproto-instantiate-schema — generate pseudo-random binary protobuf instances from a FileDescriptorSet. That's the whole job, no cap. 💅

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

reproto-instantiate-schema [OPTIONS] FQDNS...

literally the shape of it: options plus one or more FQDNS, periodt.

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

okay so here's the vibe: reproto-instantiate-schema reads a compiled .desc FileDescriptorSet and generates one pseudo-random binary protobuf instance per fully-qualified message type name supplied. One per FQDN, bestie. 🔥

Each instance is written to <output-root>/<fqdn-with-dots-as-slashes>.pb. So the FQDN's dots become slashes, and the file gets .pb on the end — path goals. 🎀

Types that produce empty instances (e.g. messages with no fields) are silently skipped. Ghosted. No announcement, no file. 👻

🎀 ARGUMENTS 🎀

• FQDNS — one or more fully-qualified message type names to instantiate (e.g. google.type.PostalAddress). You gotta use the whole government name, not a nickname. 💅

💅 OPTIONS 💅

• --descriptor-set FILE — path to the .desc FileDescriptorSet to load. [env: PROTOTEXT_DESCRIPTOR_SET] — that's the env hookup, iykyk.
• -O, --output-root DIRECTORY — root directory for output files (default: current directory). Put your output root where you want it.
• --seed INTEGER — PRNG seed (default: 0). The seed is the seed, bestie.
• --max-depth INTEGER — maximum recursion depth for nested messages (default: 4). Nested-message depth limit, default 4.
• --max-repeated INTEGER — maximum number of elements for repeated fields (default: 3). Default 3 elements max for repeated fields.
• --quiet, -q — suppress per-file progress messages. Peace out, progress spam. 🤫
• --version — print version and exit. Bye.
• --help — show a help message and exit. The classic.

🌈 ENVIRONMENT 🌈

• PROTOTEXT_DESCRIPTOR_SET — path to a .desc FileDescriptorSet used as the default when --descriptor-set is not provided. So if you don't pass the flag, it looks here. 💖
• PROTOTEXT_DEFAULT_DESCRIPTOR — accepted as a deprecated fallback. It's deprecated, bestie — still accepted as a fallback, but don't make it your whole personality. 🙈

🍓 EXAMPLES 🍓

Generate two instances using the googleapis DB:

reproto-instantiate-schema --descriptor-set googleapis.desc --seed 42 \
  -O out/ google.type.PostalAddress google.protobuf.Timestamp

Two instances, googleapis.desc, seed 42, output root out/, and the two FQDNs. Cute. ✨

🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

• prototext(1)
• reproto(1)

go read those too, bestie. 🫶

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xoxo, reproto 0.3.6 — dated 2026 💅✨