how software decays "In version 22.x, C++ protobuf added an explicit dependency on Abseil.". And to actually link in that dependency, you need to use Google Bazel's build system, because in their wisdom they split up Abseil into **186** sub libraries. If you are not using CMake or Bazel, good luck hand-importing the required Abseil libraries. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/75667971/how-do-i-properly-link-the-google-protocol-buffers-library-with-my-application-a
How do I properly link the Google Protocol Buffers library with my application at compilation?

I am following the tutorial listed here on Protobuf's website. I copied the sample addressbook.proto and compiled it using the line protoc --cpp_out=. addressbook.proto Which produced addressbook....

Stack Overflow
@bert_hubert We used Tensorflow at some point in our C++ code. So glad we no longer have that dependency. It turns out that inference of a classic neural network is just a few matrix multiplications. No need for an oversized library. The training is done from Python, where we have pre-built modules.