This reverts commit a547c523c2 or #2281
The current implementation can cause panics and performance degradation.
I will bring this back with more testing in
https://github.com/lancedb/lancedb/pull/2311
<!-- This is an auto-generated comment: release notes by coderabbit.ai
-->
## Summary by CodeRabbit
- **Documentation**
- Enhanced clarity on read consistency settings with updated
descriptions and default behavior.
- Removed outdated warnings about eventual consistency from the
troubleshooting guide.
- **Refactor**
- Streamlined the handling of the read consistency interval across
integrations, now defaulting to "None" for improved performance.
- Simplified internal logic to offer a more consistent experience.
- **Tests**
- Updated test expectations to reflect the new default representation
for the read consistency interval.
- Removed redundant tests related to "no consistency" settings for
streamlined testing.
<!-- end of auto-generated comment: release notes by coderabbit.ai -->
---------
Co-authored-by: coderabbitai[bot] <136622811+coderabbitai[bot]@users.noreply.github.com>
Previously, when we loaded the next version of the table, we would block
all reads with a write lock. Now, we only do that if
`read_consistency_interval=0`. Otherwise, we load the next version
asynchronously in the background. This should mean that
`read_consistency_interval > 0` won't have a meaningful impact on
latency.
Along with this change, I felt it was safe to change the default
consistency interval to 5 seconds. The current default is `None`, which
means we will **never** check for a new version by default. I think that
default is contrary to most users expectations.
Previously, users could only specify new data types in `alterColumns` as
strings:
```ts
await tbl.alterColumns([
path: "price",
dataType: "float"
]);
```
But this has some problems:
1. It wasn't clear what were valid types
2. It was impossible to specify nested types, like lists and vector
columns.
This PR changes it to take an Arrow data type, similar to how the Python
API works. This allows casting vector types:
```ts
await tbl.alterColumns([
{
path: "vector",
dataType: new arrow.FixedSizeList(
2,
new arrow.Field("item", new arrow.Float16(), false),
),
},
]);
```
Closes#2185
This is done as setup for a PR that will fix the OpenAI dependency
issue.
* [x] FTS examples
* [x] Setup mock openai
* [x] Ran `npm audit fix`
* [x] sentences embeddings test
* [x] Double check formatting of docs examples
