@yaoyao thanks for following up. Protoc is automatically downloaded for you and managed. I already mentioned in the github issue. Just run the build.
You keep making things more complex by asking way too many questions adding extra steps that don’t exist. If there were extra steps I’d tell you. Could you please just follow instructions like I’ve asked in your other github issues as well as your other forum posts?
If I see proof that you’ve followed instructions and you still have issues I’m happy to help.
and everything under nd4j-api/src/main/protofbuf for the base proto field. You don’t need to modify those or do anything to them just let the maven plugin do what it needs to do.