Switch away from `quick-protobuf`

[michaelsproul]

Description

We are currently using a forked version of quick-protobuf, which has become unmaintained. It would probably be good to switch to prost or another widely used library instead.

This will require upstream changes in rust-libp2p.

I think in the past we preferred quick-protobuf because it didn't require having protoc installed. We need to do a bit of digging to see if this is still impactful. We already depend on tonic which depends on prost, yet somehow don't seem to have protoc as a compile-time dep.

[michaelsproul]

@jxs Do you have more context on why libp2p uses quick-protobuf, and whether it would be feasible to switch away from it?

[macladson]

Here is some more context: libp2p/rust-libp2p#3312
Seems like it was driven by wanting to move away from needing protoc.

[michaelsproul]

IMO protoc is a lesser evil than an abandoned lib with failing tests 😅

[dknopik]

Yeah, I agree. We can keep the generated sources in the tree just as they are now to avoid needing protoc for every compilation.

wdyt @jxs?

[macladson]

For reference: libp2p/rust-libp2p#6363