[DISCUSS] Remove Protobuf dependency #2538
Merged
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The protobuf dependency was first introduced when cuML began building Treelite as a submodule. Now, Treelite has an efficient binary serializer (#2263) so Protobuf is no longer necessary for serializing trees. There is now exactly one place in cuML where Protobuf is used:
cuml/python/cuml/fil/fil.pyx
Lines 137 to 142 in 5d6377b
which, as the comment suggests, is untested.
My humble opinion is that the feature is small enough to not warrant the introduction of a dependency like Protobuf. I open this pull request to start a discussion. As in #2528, some users want to build cuML without using the Conda package management system, and the Protobuf dependency makes their lives harder.
I will file a separate pull request to document steps for building Treelite manually without Conda.