protoc is required for the build and it may need to be re-compiled surprisingly frequently. Updating environment variables and specifically PATH can require re-compilation. See bazelbuild/bazel#7095.

Use a pre-built version of protoc and/or use the functionality from toolchains_protoc. A replacement will have to support rules_go as well as protoc-gen-doc (used in docs/generated/http/BUILD.bazel) and protoc-gen-es (used in pkg/ui/workspaces/crdb-api-client/BUILD.bazel).

Epic CRDB-17171
Jira issue: CRDB-13302