"Make all fields in a message required" would defeat one of the main benefits of protobufs: The ability to retroactively add/remove fields while still keeping t

"Make all fields in a message required" would defeat one of the main benefits of protobufs: The ability to retroactively add/remove fields while still keeping the message compatible with implementations using the previous version of the proto definition. The other issues (e.g. that you cannot make a repeated oneof) are annoying, but many of them are consequences of upgrading the "language" (if you want to call it that) without introducing incompatibilities and/or changing the wire format. Having a new, incompatible version would likely be a lot more annoying. Simply not having these features at all and having to write your own ugly hack as a workaround would definitely be a lot more annoying.