## Introduction We welcome and encourage contributions of all kinds, such as: 1. Tickets with issue reports of feature requests 2. Documentation improvements 3. Code (PR or PR Review) In addition to submitting new PRs, we have a healthy tradition of community members helping review each other's PRs. Doing so is a great way to help the community as well as get more familiar with Rust and the relevant codebases. ## Finding and Creating Issues to Work On You can find a curated [good-first-issue] list to help you get started. Arrow-rs is an open contribution project, and thus there is no particular project imposed deadline for completing any issue or any restriction on who can work on an issue, nor how many people can work on an issue at the same time. Contributors drive the project forward based on their own priorities and interests and thus you are free to work on any issue that interests you. If someone is already working on an issue that you want or need but hasn't been able to finish it yet, you should feel free to work on it as well. In general it is both polite and will help avoid unnecessary duplication of work if you leave a note on an issue when you start working on it. If you want to work on an issue which is not already assigned to someone else and there are no comment indicating that someone is already working on that issue then you can assign the issue to yourself by submitting a single word comment `take`. This will assign the issue to yourself. However, if you are unable to make progress you should unassign the issue by using the `unassign me` link at the top of the issue page (and ask for help if are stuck) so that someone else can get involved in the work. If you plan to work on a new feature that doesn't have an existing ticket, it is a good idea to open a ticket to discuss the feature. Advanced discussion often helps avoid wasted effort by determining early if the feature is a good fit for Arrow-rs before too much time is invested. It also often helps to discuss your ideas with the community to get feedback on implementation. [good-first-issue]: https://github.com/apache/arrow-rs/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+label%3A%22good+first+issue%22 ## Developer's guide to Arrow Rust ### Setting Up Your Build Environment Install the Rust tool chain: https://www.rust-lang.org/tools/install Also, make sure your Rust tool chain is up-to-date, because we always use the latest stable version of Rust to test this project. ```bash rustup update stable ``` ### How to compile This is a standard cargo project with workspaces. To build it, you need to have `rust` and `cargo`: ```bash cargo build ``` You can also use rust's official docker image: ```bash docker run --rm -v $(pwd):/arrow-rs -it rust /bin/bash -c "cd /arrow-rs && rustup component add rustfmt && cargo build" ``` The command above assumes that are in the root directory of the project. You can also compile specific workspaces: ```bash cd arrow && cargo build ``` ### Git Submodules Before running tests and examples, it is necessary to set up the local development environment. The tests rely on test data that is contained in git submodules. To pull down this data run the following: ```bash git submodule update --init ``` This populates data in two git submodules: - `./parquet-testing/data` (sourced from https://github.com/apache/parquet-testing.git) - `./testing` (sourced from https://github.com/apache/arrow-testing) By default, `cargo test` will look for these directories at their standard location. The following environment variables can be used to override the location: ```bash # Optionally specify a different location for test data export PARQUET_TEST_DATA=$(cd ./parquet-testing/data; pwd) export ARROW_TEST_DATA=$(cd ./testing/data; pwd) ``` From here on, this is a pure Rust project and `cargo` can be used to run tests, benchmarks, docs and examples as usual. ## Running the tests Run tests using the Rust standard `cargo test` command: ```bash # run all unit and integration tests cargo test # run tests for the arrow crate cargo test -p arrow ``` For some changes, you may want to run additional tests. You can find up-to-date information on the current CI tests in [.github/workflows](https://github.com/apache/arrow-rs/tree/main/.github/workflows). Here are some examples of additional tests you may want to run: ```bash # run tests for the parquet crate cargo test -p parquet # run arrow tests with all features enabled cargo test -p arrow --all-features # run the doc tests cargo test --doc ``` ## Code Formatting Our CI uses `rustfmt` to check code formatting. Before submitting a PR be sure to run the following and check for lint issues: ```bash cargo +stable fmt --all -- --check ``` Note that currently the above will not check all source files in the parquet crate. To check all parquet files run the following from the top-level `arrow-rs` directory: ```bash cargo fmt -p parquet -- --check --config skip_children=true `find ./parquet -name "*.rs" \! -name format.rs` ``` ## Breaking Changes Our [release schedule] allows breaking API changes only in major releases. This means that if your PR has a breaking API change, it should be marked as `api-change` and it will not be merged until development opens for the next major release. See [this ticket] for details. [release schedule]: README.md#release-versioning-and-schedule [this ticket]: https://github.com/apache/arrow-rs/issues/5907 ## Clippy Lints We use `clippy` for checking lints during development, and CI runs `clippy` checks. Run the following to check for `clippy` lints: ```bash # run clippy with default settings cargo clippy --workspace --all-targets --all-features -- -D warnings ``` If you use Visual Studio Code with the `rust-analyzer` plugin, you can enable `clippy` to run each time you save a file. See https://users.rust-lang.org/t/how-to-use-clippy-in-vs-code-with-rust-analyzer/41881. One of the concerns with `clippy` is that it often produces a lot of false positives, or that some recommendations may hurt readability. We do not have a policy of which lints are ignored, but if you disagree with a `clippy` lint, you may disable the lint and briefly justify it. Search for `allow(clippy::` in the codebase to identify lints that are ignored/allowed. We currently prefer ignoring lints on the lowest unit possible. - If you are introducing a line that returns a lint warning or error, you may disable the lint on that line. - If you have several lints on a function or module, you may disable the lint on the function or module. - If a lint is pervasive across multiple modules, you may disable it at the crate level. ## Running Benchmarks Running benchmarks are a good way to test the performance of a change. As benchmarks usually take a long time to run, we recommend running targeted tests instead of the full suite. ```bash # run all benchmarks cargo bench # run arrow benchmarks cargo bench -p arrow # run benchmark for the parse_time function within the arrow-cast crate cargo bench -p arrow-cast --bench parse_time ``` To set the baseline for your benchmarks, use the --save-baseline flag: ```bash git checkout main cargo bench --bench parse_time -- --save-baseline main git checkout feature cargo bench --bench parse_time -- --baseline main ``` ## Git Pre-Commit Hook We can use [git pre-commit hook](https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Customizing-Git-Git-Hooks) to automate various kinds of git pre-commit checking/formatting. Suppose you are in the root directory of the project. First check if the file already exists: ```bash ls -l .git/hooks/pre-commit ``` If the file already exists, to avoid mistakenly **overriding**, you MAY have to check the link source or file content. Else if not exist, let's safely soft link [pre-commit.sh](pre-commit.sh) as file `.git/hooks/pre-commit`: ```bash ln -s ../../pre-commit.sh .git/hooks/pre-commit ``` If sometimes you want to commit without checking, just run `git commit` with `--no-verify`: ```bash git commit --no-verify -m "... commit message ..." ```