protoc, short for protocol buffer compiler, compiles .proto definitions and decodes or deserializes protobuf data. It is especially useful when efficient protobuf formats such as pprof are difficult to inspect directly. section 9.1.2
Inspecting a pprof message
Extract a compressed pprof file, then decode its Function messages and filter the output for a task name: protoc --decode=perftools.profiles.Function pprof.proto < pprof | grep --color=auto -e ".*Task". The result can reveal entries such as main.slowTask.
