THANKS

This project benefits from the contributions and feedback of many individuals.

We would like to especially thank:

• Felipe Gasper (@felipegasper) - For crucial feedback on Perl XS best practices, particularly regarding the safe handling of Perl strings with SvPVbyte and SvPVutf8.

• Dean Hamstead (@djzort) - For publicity, encouragement, valuable build system feedback (identifying issues with missing cpanfile and Makefile.PL dependencies), and testing the README.md instructions on different environments, which led to significant improvements in the build process.

• Leon Timmermans (@Leont) - For expressing interest and willingness to contribute, and for authoritative guidance on modern Perl XS development practices, including the use of ppport.h and standard magic extension APIs.

• Paul Evans (@LeoNerd) - For invaluable guidance on modern Perl core and XS development standards, particularly regarding the use of mg_findext and PERL_MAGIC_ext for robust, collision-free metadata attachment.

• Steffen Müller (@tsee) - For offering to collaborate, providing valuable guidance as a veteran Perl core contributor and former maintainer of ExtUtils::ParseXS, and for pointing us towards Mattia Barbon's excellent google-protobuf-dynamic library which served as a key reference.

• Brad Fitzpatrick (@bradfitz) - For the original 2008 protobuf-perlxs implementation. His comprehensive test suite and API design goals for high-performance Protocol Buffers in Perl continue to serve as the benchmark and foundation for this modern, UPB-based extension.

• Mattia Barbon (@mbarbon) - For his work on Google::ProtocolBuffers::Dynamic. His implementation provided a vital performance target and architectural reference during the development of our "Fast Accessor" XSUB optimization layer.

• Sergey Stryapukhin (@sergey-stryapukhin) - For maintaining the pure-Perl Google::ProtocolBuffers implementation, which served as an essential baseline for performance benchmarking and API compatibility.

• The p5p community - For their engagement and suggestions.

• The authors and maintainers of the upb library.

• The Google Protobuf Team - For preparing such a welcoming, well-structured, and robust codebase to integrate with, and for their invaluable guidance throughout the integration process.

Your contributions help make this project better!