Use SimpleExtensions for Substrait type variations
- Dominant language
- Rust
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Description
### Describe the bug
Substrait has an extension mechanism for defining things not included in the protobuf format. See https://substrait.io/extensions/#simple-extensions for definition and https://substrait.io/tutorial/sql_to_substrait/#plans for an example (the example only has scalar functions but idea is the same for types and type variations).
DF has been using the extensions for functions, and #11510 adds support for extension types. However DF still uses self-defined consts for type variations (see https://github.com/apache/datafusion/blob/12d82c427d6c37f7884a508707ccd3058a446908/datafusion/substrait/src/variation_const.rs), rather than writing the variations as extensions in the plan. That makes it hard for other producers/consumers to work with DF variations, since they'd need to match the constants, rather than matching by name (+uri).
We should move type variations to also produce simple extensions.
### To Reproduce
_No response_
### Expected behavior
No hardcoded references; type variations written as SimpleExtensionDeclarations à la https://github.com/substrait-io/substrait/blob/a68c1ac62f92d703da624cb8ac0cef854dd2b35f/extensions/type_variations.yaml
### Additional context
DF also doesn't use the extensionUris mechanism correctly, the field isn't filled and all extensionUriReference are just hardcoded into max u32. That's filed separately as https://github.com/apache/datafusion/issues/11545
Contributor guide
Research direction
Start with datafusion/substrait/src/variation_const.rs and compare its type-variation constants with the Substrait SimpleExtensionDeclarations documentation and the type_variations.yaml example. Trace the existing extension-type support referenced by #11510. Done means type variations are emitted as named extensions in plans, with no hardcoded variation references.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- rust
- Domain
- backend-api-design
- Issue type
- Feature
- Difficulty
- 4/5
- Estimated time
- 3-5 days
- Activity status
- Stale
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 45/100