Yang Cen
0bceaaf3f0
Lance supports `search_effort`, but LanceDB cannot pass it through its query APIs. Expose the parameter in Rust, Python sync/async and TypeScript, including remote requests and hybrid query conversion, using the [Lance v14.0.0-beta.13](https://github.com/lance-format/lance/releases/tag/v14.0.0-beta.13) dependency already on main. The default is `None` (Auto, internally 0.5). Any explicit effort, including 0.5, overrides fixed `nprobes` in either setter order; explicit minimum/maximum bounds remain effective. Invalid values are rejected in the Rust core. Hybrid conversion now retains the vector probe parameters and handles an inferred FTS column without panicking. Namespace queries with explicit effort execute locally because the namespace wire model cannot carry it. MemWAL LSM queries reject it explicitly because Lance's LSM scanner does not yet expose this option. Maturin is included in the dev extra so the documented build command works in the project environment. BREAKING CHANGE: The public Rust `VectorQueryRequest` struct now includes `search_effort: Option<f64>`. Downstream code that initializes every field explicitly must add `search_effort: None` or use `..Default::default()`. Exhaustive destructuring patterns must include the new field or `..`. Query-builder calls and struct literals that already use `..Default::default()` require no source changes. The new effort setters in Python and TypeScript are additive. This PR does not change the persisted file format. Using explicit effort with remote tables requires server support for `search_effort` and its precedence over `nprobes`; the client wire tests do not establish that a deployed server supports it. Server-side support is tracked in lancedb/sophon#8607. Validation on AWS after merging current main (Lance beta.13 / SDK beta.5): - 14 Rust regressions and the API doctest pass. - 60 parameter regressions, the full 47-test namespace suite, and three API doctests pass. The parameter selection includes some namespace cases. - 40 TypeScript query tests and 54 remote tests pass; build, lint and generated docs pass. - Rust Clippy, Python package lint/format, Pyright and lockfile checks pass. Repository-wide Ruff reports 49 lint errors and 11 formatting failures in unchanged `docs/web-tests` files; those files are byte-identical to main and outside this change. All 1,103 Git-tracked files match the AWS validation checkout. No benchmark scripts or result artifacts are included, and no performance improvement is claimed. Uses lance-format/lance#9798. Server-side support is in lancedb/sophon#8607.
LanceDB Documentation
LanceDB docs are available at docs.lancedb.com.
The SDK docs are built and deployed automatically by Github Actions
whenever a commit is pushed to the main branch. So it is possible for the docs to show
unreleased features.
Building the docs
Setup
- Install LanceDB Python. See setup in Python contributing guide.
Run
make developto install the Python package. - Install documentation dependencies. From LanceDB repo root:
pip install -r docs/requirements.txt
Preview the docs
cd docs
mkdocs serve
If you want to just generate the HTML files:
PYTHONPATH=. mkdocs build -f docs/mkdocs.yml
If successful, you should see a docs/site directory that you can verify locally.
Adding examples
To make sure examples are correct, we put examples in test files so they can be run as part of our test suites.
You can see the tests are at:
- Python:
python/python/tests/docs - Typescript:
nodejs/examples/
Checking python examples
cd python
pytest -vv python/tests/docs
Checking typescript examples
The examples depend on @lancedb/lancedb at file:../dist, so the package must be
built before running the tests. This uses pnpm; see the
Typescript contributing guide for the toolchain setup.
pushd nodejs
pnpm install
pnpm build
popd
Then you can run the examples by going to the nodejs/examples directory, which is a
separate pnpm package with its own lockfile:
pushd nodejs/examples
pnpm install
pnpm test
popd
API documentation
Python
The Python API documentation is organized based on the file docs/src/python/python.md.
We manually add entries there so we can control the organization of the reference page.
However, this means any new types must be manually added to the file. No additional
steps are needed to generate the API documentation.
Typescript
The typescript API documentation is generated from the typescript source code using typedoc.
When new APIs are added, you must manually re-run the typedoc command to update the API documentation. The new files should be checked into the repository.
pushd nodejs
# `pnpm docs` would invoke pnpm's built-in `docs` command, not the script.
pnpm run docs
popd