Create a guide for proto.Message String() methods

[robert-zaremba]

Summary

• in some legacy SDK Message implementations we are using yaml Marshaller.
• Moreover ecosystem code uses that method for pretty-printing
• This is buggy, direct yaml marshalling is not supported any more, can produce wrong output or not display some fields at all (eg sdk.Uint). One workaround is to go through JSON (msg -> json -> map -> yaml)

Proposal

Create a guide or an antipattern guide explaining proper way to format proto Messages.

Ref: #12880 (comment)

[alexanderbez]

What do you mean by "format Proto messages"?

[robert-zaremba]

What do you mean by "format Proto messages"?

Creating human friendly representation of a proto.Message, usually it's done in the String() method.

[aaronc]

My opinion is that developers shouldn't be implementing proto message String methods by hand. The official proto compiler does it automatically. It's only because of some gogo options this is even allowed

[alexanderbez]

I'm struggling to understand the proposal. Isn't this just making sure we don't include option (gogoproto.goproto_stringer) = false;?

[robert-zaremba]

@alexanderbez the proposal is to create a guide / recommendation, in an documentation. Because as we can see, it's clear for developers.