# find\_package Protobuf confusing message

**URL:** https://discourse.cmake.org/t/find-package-protobuf-confusing-message/9613
**Category:** Development
**Created:** [December 11, 2023, 9:45pm UTC](https://discourse.cmake.org/t/find-package-protobuf-confusing-message/9613 "2023-12-11T21:45:43Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![eriols](https://discourse.cmake.org/user_avatar/discourse.cmake.org/eriols/32/945_2.png) [@eriols](https://discourse.cmake.org/u/eriols)
#### Post date: [December 11, 2023, 9:45pm UTC](https://discourse.cmake.org/t/find-package-protobuf-confusing-message/9613/1 "2023-12-11T21:45:44Z")

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Upgraded to Fedora 39 and this broke a `find_package(Protobuf 3 REQUIRED)` I had in an interesting way.  
I’m getting `Could NOT find Protobuf [...] found suitable version 3.19.6, minimum required is 3`.  
The issue is that I was forcing static libs but now Fedora only served me only shared ones. Removing the `Protobuf_USE_STATIC_LIBS` works nicely, but the error message is a bit odd, don’t you think?

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### Author: ![ben.boeckel](https://discourse.cmake.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/ea5d25/32.png) [@ben.boeckel](https://discourse.cmake.org/u/ben.boeckel)
#### Post date: [December 19, 2023, 3:03am UTC](https://discourse.cmake.org/t/find-package-protobuf-confusing-message/9613/2 "2023-12-19T03:03:17Z")

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What was in that `[...]` part of the message? Improvement to error messages would be good though. Perhaps the relevant `_NOT_FOUND_MESSAGE` variable could be filled out in the proper codepath?
