lance-format / lance-format/lance

Add `ReadFileError` and `DecodeColumnError` wrappers to provide better context for decoding errors

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good first issue
Dominant language
Rust
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Avg merge
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Merged PRs (30d)
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Description

Currently, errors that happen when decoding a column are missing information about:

  1. What column that is
  2. What file we are reading

This context is available higher up in the call stack that the main error is generate. We can add additional context by adding wrapper errors.

This approach is described nicely in https://sabrinajewson.org/blog/errors.

Basically, want to do things like:

enum DecodeError {
    NumberOutOfRange,
    ...
}

struct DecodeFieldError {
    field_name: String,
    field_id: i32,
    offset: u64,
    source: DecodeError,
}

fn decode(field: Field, data: Bytes) -> Result<_, DecodeFieldError> {
    ...
}

enum ReadFileErrorKind {
    IO(ObjectStoreError),
    Decode(DecodeFieldError),
}

struct ReadFileError {
    path: Path,
    kind: ReadFileErrorKind,
}

fn read_file(path: Path) -> Result<_, ReadFileError> {
    let data = read_data(path)?;
    for field in data.schema() {
        decode(field, data).map_err(|err: DecodeFieldError| {
            ReadFileError { path, kind: ReadFileErrorKind::Decode(err) }
        });
    }
}

And then the error stack would look like:

Error: failed to read file 'data.lance'

Caused by:
    0: failed to read field 'age' (id: 10) for row offset 10
    1: number out of range

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by locating the file-reading and column-decoding call sites in the Rust code, then trace how decoding errors propagate through them. Add the requested error context so the displayed error chain identifies the file, column name and ID, and row offset; verify the resulting error output matches the example.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
rust
Domain
data
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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