Many thanks. In fact, it isn't the compiling of the protocol buffer .proto file itself that's the problem (which is what pyprotobuf can do) - I can do that on any computer and copy it over since the "compiler" output is just a .py file. The issue is the lack of supporting libraries that the outputted .py depends on: the whole google.protobuf suite, etc. The installer just doesn't seem to be able to be easily configured to install those libraries in a local directory without first compiling the .proto compiler binary using GCC.