There's been a visibility change of members of the Generator class in the php namespace leading to both symbol addition and removal in libprotoc. See src/google/protobuf/compiler/php/php_generator.{cc,h}.
According to check_sym and from inspecting the diff, libprotobuf and libprotobuf-lite don't need a bump (they also don't link against libprotoc). The changelog doesn't mention this, it only mentions these changes: C# -- * Fix latest ArgumentException for C# extensions (#7188[1]) * Enforce recursion depth checking for unknown fields (#7210[2]) Ruby ---- * Fix wrappers with a zero value (#7195[3]) * Fix JSON serialization of 0/empty-valued wrapper types (#7198[4]) Index: Makefile =================================================================== RCS file: /var/cvs/ports/devel/protobuf/Makefile,v retrieving revision 1.32 diff -u -p -r1.32 Makefile --- Makefile 6 Feb 2020 14:46:16 -0000 1.32 +++ Makefile 4 Mar 2020 11:16:32 -0000 @@ -2,15 +2,15 @@ COMMENT = c++ protocol buffers -V = 3.11.3 +V = 3.11.4 DISTNAME = protobuf-cpp-$V PKGNAME = protobuf-$V WRKDIST = ${WRKDIR}/protobuf-${V} -SHARED_LIBS += protobuf 6.0 # 22.3 -SHARED_LIBS += protoc 6.0 # 22.3 -SHARED_LIBS += protobuf-lite 6.0 # 22.3 +SHARED_LIBS += protobuf 6.0 # 22.4 +SHARED_LIBS += protoc 7.0 # 22.4 +SHARED_LIBS += protobuf-lite 6.0 # 22.4 CATEGORIES = devel Index: distinfo =================================================================== RCS file: /var/cvs/ports/devel/protobuf/distinfo,v retrieving revision 1.11 diff -u -p -r1.11 distinfo --- distinfo 6 Feb 2020 14:46:16 -0000 1.11 +++ distinfo 1 Mar 2020 13:02:13 -0000 @@ -1,2 +1,2 @@ -SHA256 (protobuf-cpp-3.11.3.tar.gz) = n/sf5gkSQPLnvKyltl+xnLe5Uf/Jpg2LLJ1z+J8OClE= -SIZE (protobuf-cpp-3.11.3.tar.gz) = 4605200 +SHA256 (protobuf-cpp-3.11.4.tar.gz) = uku8PmtY0sz+QG5hZXbvSHEKKq4gX0Y2GAJfxpFUnP4= +SIZE (protobuf-cpp-3.11.4.tar.gz) = 4605834