Integrate recent changes from google3.

protoc
- New flags --encode and --decode can be used to convert between protobuf text
  format and binary format from the command-line.
- New flag --descriptor_set_out can be used to write FileDescriptorProtos for
  all parsed files directly into a single output file.  This is particularly
  useful if you wish to parse .proto files from programs written in languages
  other than C++: just run protoc as a background process and have it output
  a FileDescriptorList, then parse that natively.

C++
- Reflection objects are now per-class rather than per-instance.  To make this
  possible, the Reflection interface had to be changed such that all methods
  take the Message instance as a parameter.  This change improves performance
  significantly in memory-bandwidth-limited use cases, since it makes the
  message objects smaller.  Note that source-incompatible interface changes
  like this will not be made again after the library leaves beta.

Python
- MergeFrom(message) and CopyFrom(message) are now implemented.
- SerializeToString() raises an exception if the message is missing required
  fields.
- Code organization improvements.
- Fixed doc comments for RpcController and RpcChannel, which had somehow been
  swapped.

1 files changed, 49 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/python/google/protobuf/message.py b/python/google/protobuf/message.py
index 9b48f889..593f6a63 100755
--- a/python/google/protobuf/message.py
+++ b/python/google/protobuf/message.py
@@ -65,15 +65,43 @@ class Message(object):
     return text_format.MessageToString(self)
 
   def MergeFrom(self, other_msg):
+    """Merges the contents of the specified message into current message.
+
+    This method merges the contents of the specified message into the current
+    message. Singular fields that are set in the specified message overwrite
+    the corresponding fields in the current message. Repeated fields are
+    appended. Singular sub-messages and groups are recursively merged.
+
+    Args:
+      other_msg: Message to merge into the current message.
+    """
     raise NotImplementedError
 
   def CopyFrom(self, other_msg):
-    raise NotImplementedError
+    """Copies the content of the specified message into the current message.
+
+    The method clears the current message and then merges the specified
+    message using MergeFrom.
+
+    Args:
+      other_msg: Message to copy into the current one.
+    """
+    if self == other_msg:
+      return
+    self.Clear()
+    self.MergeFrom(other_msg)
 
   def Clear(self):
+    """Clears all data that was set in the message."""
     raise NotImplementedError
 
   def IsInitialized(self):
+    """Checks if the message is initialized.
+
+    Returns:
+      The method returns True if the message is initialized (i.e. all of its
+      required fields are set).
+    """
     raise NotImplementedError
 
   # TODO(robinson): MergeFromString() should probably return None and be
@@ -118,6 +146,26 @@ class Message(object):
     self.MergeFromString(serialized)
 
   def SerializeToString(self):
+    """Serializes the protocol message to a binary string.
+
+    Returns:
+      A binary string representation of the message if all of the required
+      fields in the message are set (i.e. the message is initialized).
+
+    Raises:
+      message.EncodeError if the message isn't initialized.
+    """
+    raise NotImplementedError
+
+  def SerializePartialToString(self):
+    """Serializes the protocol message to a binary string.
+
+    This method is similar to SerializeToString but doesn't check if the
+    message is initialized.
+
+    Returns:
+      A string representation of the partial message.
+    """
     raise NotImplementedError
 
   # TODO(robinson): Decide whether we like these better