[rcfox]

It can be approximated with a single-item `oneof` field. It's ugly and boilerplatey, but at least it's binary-compatible with proto2 and gives the original behaviour.

My main problem with proto2 these days is that I needed to interface with some C# code, and there is no proto2 library for C#!

[kentonv]

> there is no proto2 library for C#!

Looks like that's getting fixed!

https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf/blob/master/docs...

https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf/pulls?q=is%3Apr+...

[mattnewton]

Personally I even like this more since this feels much more explicit. The idea of depending on being set to the null value or unset at all gets my spider sense shivering and shuddering; someone is going to miss this, probably me.

[saberience]

Dude, there are tons of packages for doing Protobuf in C#, I've been writing systems in C# that used proto for over three years I think at this point. Here's one for starters: https://www.nuget.org/packages/protobuf-net