Upgrade to protobufjs version 8

[ShadiestGoat]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

ProtobufJS 8 introduces support for edition 2024. Currently, proto-loader does not support version 2024. I'm not sure why that is a breaking change, however

Describe the solution you'd like

Upgrade to protobufjs v8

Describe alternatives you've considered

Manually forcing v8 resolution in the upstream project. This is not a google solution as it introduces unsafe behavior

Additional context

n/a

[dcodeIO]

Hey, protobuf.js maintainer here. Fwiw, I'd expect the 7.x to 8.x upgrade to be relatively straightforward: These two are still pretty close architecturally, with the same module system, same Node.js support floor, and mostly the same API shape / behavior.

On why 8,.x is a breaking change: Edition 2024 support required restructuring feature and descriptor handling internally (e.g. protobufjs/protobuf.js#2060). Very little of that is visible on the surface proto-loader uses.

I'm also backporting fixes that I think are important for 7.x users in the meantime, but moving proto-loader to 8.x would simplify maintenance on that front over time.

Potentially relevant for grpc-node / proto-loader, apart from Edition 2024:

• Extended descriptor support, including Editions metadata and keepCase on Root.fromDescriptor
• Several conformance improvements, now passing the v35 conformance harness (see)
• A new protoc-gen-pbjs plugin, if useful here
• A new spec-compliant ProtoJSON extension, if useful elsewhere

For the keepCase option specifically, descriptor loading could pass its existing keepCase option through to Root.fromDescriptor(decodedDescriptorSet, { keepCase: options.keepCase }), which is now supported.

Happy to help. (I'm also open to more sustained collaboration around protobuf.js if that is useful.)

[AlbinoGeek]

Checking in on this — is there a sense of when PR #3067 might land, or what's currently blocking review? We have a few projects carrying an override to work around the protobufjs v7 pin in proto-loader, and would like to drop it once the v8 bump merges. Happy to help test if that would move things along. Thanks for the work here.