Files
lancedb/docs
Xuanwo 63aa06ef7d feat(python): expose Function GPU classes and placement (#4791)
## Summary

- Add sync/async `DBConnection.list_gpu_classes()` returning typed
`GpuClass` records for `GET /v1/gpu/classes`. Records include the class
name, Kubernetes resource, GPU model and memory, per-worker GPU maximum,
and worker CPU/memory/ephemeral-storage limits.
- Add `udf(gpu_class=...)` for immutable Function-level GPU placement.
It requires `gpu=True`; Function versions expose their registered
`gpu_class`.
- Add `gpu_class` and `gpu_count` to `refresh_column` /
`refresh_column_async` and Rust `RefreshColumnOptions`. Both are sent as
top-level `backfill_column` fields and validated before any request.
`gpu_count` is the aggregate GPU budget across Function workers.
- Validate GPU class names with the server lowercase 63-character
DNS-label rule.
- Document the discovery-to-registration flow, configured hardware
versus free capacity, System Usage permission, and per-refresh GPU
placement in the API and web guides.

Older servers without `/v1/gpu/classes` produce a clear
`NotImplementedError` instead of a bare 404.

Part of ENT-3470. The client follows the in-flight Sophon contract on
`xuanwo/ent-3470-fix` for GPU class discovery and backfill placement
options.

## Breaking change

`PythonRuntimeSpec::PythonV2` adds `gpu_class`, and
`RefreshColumnOptions` adds `gpu_class` and `gpu_count`. Rust callers
constructing either value with all fields explicitly must supply the new
fields.

## Validation

At `7685c968`: Rust GPU tests (5 passed), Rust/PyO3 clippy, Python
extension build, pyright, ruff, and Python Function/runtime, discovery,
refresh placement, and refresh regressions (147 passed, 6 skipped).

At `b22428fd`: Rust GPU tests (5 passed), rustfmt, ruff, pyright,
Function slice 2 (85 passed), and remote GPU/refresh tests (20 passed).

The final commit only updates documentation and Rust doc comments.
2026-11-02 08:50:36 +08:00
..

LanceDB Documentation

For website guides in docs/web, start with Documentation in CONTRIBUTING.md. That covers editing pages, generated examples, previews, availability and drafts.

This page covers the SDK reference in docs/src, built with MkDocs. Its GitHub Actions workflow builds and deploys on pushes to main, so it can include unreleased APIs. That is separate from the release editions of the Mintlify website.

Building the docs

Setup

  1. Install LanceDB Python. See setup in Python contributing guide. Run make develop to install the Python package.
  2. Install documentation dependencies. From LanceDB repo root: pip install -r docs/requirements.txt

Preview the docs

Run these commands from the LanceDB repository root. The subshell changes into docs to load mkdocs.yml, while leaving your shell in the repository root.

(cd docs && PYTHONPATH=. mkdocs serve)

If you want to just generate the HTML files:

(cd docs && PYTHONPATH=. mkdocs build)

If successful, you should see a docs/site directory in the repository root 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