lance-format / lance-format/lance

Add metadata field into BranchContents and TagContents

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#6,337 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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enhancement
Dominant language
Rust
Stars
7.1k
Forks
852
Avg merge
3d 18h
Merged PRs (30d)
272

Description

Like #6333

I think adding an optional metadata field to both tags and branches would help management platforms use Lance itself as the single source of truth for tag and branch metadata.

That said, this is less urgent than #6333, so I’m opening a separate issue to discuss it independently.

Two additional points to consider:

  1. We could make this metadata structured, for example as JSON, so it can hold richer metadata instead of just plain text.
  2. If we decide to move forward with this, we may need to evaluate whether introducing an API-breaking change in dataset.rs is acceptable. Adding a separate API solely to support an extra description field feels a bit
    awkward to me.

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 comparing this proposal with #6333 and reviewing the BranchContents and TagContents APIs in dataset.rs. Resolve whether metadata should be structured JSON or plain text, and whether an API-breaking change is acceptable; done means the scope and API design are agreed before implementation.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
rust
Domain
backend-api-design
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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