Files
lancedb/docs
lancedb-gatefixer[bot]andXuanwo 83b7275137 fix(remote): make HTTP timeout errors actionable (#4650)
Remote `create_table` reader uploads can exceed the read deadline while
waiting for response headers, but reqwest's main error message only says
"error sending request". Make HTTP and retry errors explicitly identify
timeouts and name the relevant `client_config.timeout_config` settings
and environment variables, preserving typed sources, request metadata,
and retry classification.

Document that the read timeout covers waiting for headers during upload.
This implements the issue's diagnostic option: creation still uses one
streaming request, so large or slow readers may require a longer
`client_config.timeout_config.read_timeout`.

Validation:
- 48 focused Rust client, error, and retry tests passed. Regression
coverage holds an upload open until its read timeout and also exercises
TLS connection timeouts, with and without retries.
- 8 Python create-table and HTTP/retry error tests passed in the
uv-managed environment after rebuilding the extension, including reader
creation with read and overall timeouts.
- `cargo check --quiet --features remote --tests --examples` passed.
- `cargo clippy --quiet --features remote --tests --examples` passed.
- Rust formatting and Python package Ruff lint/format checks passed.
- Repository-wide `ruff check .` reports 49 existing findings under
`docs/web-tests`; those files are unchanged.

Fixes #4646

<!-- lance-gatekeeper-fix:v1 agent=ce1c040fa581f1748166ecb686d9c9c0
generation=1 -->

---------

Co-authored-by: Gatefixer <313497061+lancedb-gatefixer[bot]@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: Xuanwo <github@xuanwo.io>
2026-10-27 18:51:06 +08:00
..
2026-09-09 15:33:04 +08:00

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

  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