If you don't need fancier types or features than what JSON provides you can use JSON for your config and use protobuf to parse it directly. Used this for a lar

If you don't need fancier types or features than what JSON provides you can use JSON for your config and use protobuf to parse it directly. Used this for a large, semi-generated config file (think large device trees). File was generated once and then there was some light manual editing after. JSON + pb worked great.