Protobuf errors while using Tensorflow Object Detection API locally - tensorflow

Question

I got tensorflow and object detection API on my machine.
Test run shows that everything works.
~ $ cd models/research
research $ protoc object_detection/protos/*.proto --python_out=.
research $ export PYTHONPATH=$PYTHONPATH:`pwd`:`pwd`/slim
research $ python3 object_detection/builders/model_builder_test.py
...............
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 15 tests in 0.144s
OK
Then I tried to retrain a model and got the protobuf error
research $ cd object_detection
object_detection $ python3 train.py --logtostderr --train_dir=training/ --pipeline_config_path=ssdlite_mobilenet_v2_coco_2018_05_09/pipeline.config
WARNING:tensorflow:From /Users/me/models/research/object_detection/trainer.py:257: create_global_step (from tensorflow.contrib.framework.python.ops.variables) is deprecated and will be removed in a future version.
Instructions for updating:
Please switch to tf.train.create_global_step
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/Users/me/models/research/object_detection/utils/label_map_util.py", line 135, in load_labelmap
text_format.Merge(label_map_string, label_map)
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.6/lib/python3.6/site-packages/google/protobuf/text_format.py", line 533, in Merge
descriptor_pool=descriptor_pool)
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.6/lib/python3.6/site-packages/google/protobuf/text_format.py", line 587, in MergeLines
return parser.MergeLines(lines, message)
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.6/lib/python3.6/site-packages/google/protobuf/text_format.py", line 620, in MergeLines
self._ParseOrMerge(lines, message)
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.6/lib/python3.6/site-packages/google/protobuf/text_format.py", line 635, in _ParseOrMerge
self._MergeField(tokenizer, message)
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.6/lib/python3.6/site-packages/google/protobuf/text_format.py", line 735, in _MergeField
merger(tokenizer, message, field)
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.6/lib/python3.6/site-packages/google/protobuf/text_format.py", line 823, in _MergeMessageField
self._MergeField(tokenizer, sub_message)
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.6/lib/python3.6/site-packages/google/protobuf/text_format.py", line 722, in _MergeField
tokenizer.Consume(':')
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.6/lib/python3.6/site-packages/google/protobuf/text_format.py", line 1087, in Consume
raise self.ParseError('Expected "%s".' % token)
google.protobuf.text_format.ParseError: 3:10 : Expected ":".
During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.6/lib/python3.6/site-packages/google/protobuf/internal/python_message.py", line 1083, in MergeFromString
if self._InternalParse(serialized, 0, length) != length:
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.6/lib/python3.6/site-packages/google/protobuf/internal/python_message.py", line 1105, in InternalParse
(tag_bytes, new_pos) = local_ReadTag(buffer, pos)
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.6/lib/python3.6/site-packages/google/protobuf/internal/decoder.py", line 181, in ReadTag
while six.indexbytes(buffer, pos) & 0x80:
TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for &: 'str' and 'int'
During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "train.py", line 184, in <module>
tf.app.run()
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.6/lib/python3.6/site-packages/tensorflow/python/platform/app.py", line 126, in run
_sys.exit(main(argv))
File "train.py", line 180, in main
graph_hook_fn=graph_rewriter_fn)
File "/Users/me/models/research/object_detection/trainer.py", line 264, in train
train_config.prefetch_queue_capacity, data_augmentation_options)
File "/Users/me/models/research/object_detection/trainer.py", line 59, in create_input_queue
tensor_dict = create_tensor_dict_fn()
File "train.py", line 121, in get_next
dataset_builder.build(config)).get_next()
File "/Users/me/models/research/object_detection/builders/dataset_builder.py", line 155, in build
label_map_proto_file=label_map_proto_file)
File "/Users/me/models/research/object_detection/data_decoders/tf_example_decoder.py", line 245, in __init__
use_display_name)
File "/Users/me/models/research/object_detection/utils/label_map_util.py", line 152, in get_label_map_dict
label_map = load_labelmap(label_map_path)
File "/Users/me/models/research/object_detection/utils/label_map_util.py", line 137, in load_labelmap
label_map.ParseFromString(label_map_string)
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.6/lib/python3.6/site-packages/google/protobuf/message.py", line 185, in ParseFromString
self.MergeFromString(serialized)
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.6/lib/python3.6/site-packages/google/protobuf/internal/python_message.py", line 1089, in MergeFromString
raise message_mod.DecodeError('Truncated message.')
google.protobuf.message.DecodeError: Truncated message.
object_detection $
I tried a bunch of similar problems' solutions, but they didn't work for my case. For example this one suggest to encode pbtxt file with ASCII.
Python 2 gives an error too. Here is it's last line
google.protobuf.message.DecodeError: Unexpected end-group tag.
Context:
macOS 10.13.4
Local run on CPU
Python 3.6.4
protobuf 3.5.1
libprotoc 3.4.0
tensorflow 1.8.0
Google Cloud SDK 200.0.0
bq 2.0.33
core 2018.04.30
gsutil 4.31