Published SDK builds currently expose local SQL computed columns and materialized-view execution that are not ready for release. Add the opt-in `experimental-functions` Cargo feature to the Rust core and forward it through the Python and Node bindings; published packages leave it disabled. Local declarations and refreshes now return `NotSupported` before mutating tables or spawning jobs, including prepared materialized-view creation. Remote Cloud/Enterprise client operations, Python UDF packaging, ordinary eager `add_columns`, and access to existing data remain available. Stored metadata and write protections stay active, and shared server commit helpers remain usable. CI covers both feature configurations. Existing local execution tests run with the feature enabled; default-build regressions cover early rejection, unchanged table versions, existing metadata protections, and normal eager transforms. API and source-build documentation explain the opt-in. Validation: Rust library tests pass with the feature disabled (1,869 tests) and enabled (1,947 tests), plus three default-build integration regressions. Python and TypeScript bindings were rebuilt and tested in both configurations, including mocked remote requests; Rust formatting, Python package lint, TypeScript lint/build, and generated docs were checked. Repository-wide Ruff still reports 48 pre-existing errors in unchanged `docs/web-tests` files.
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
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