Environment:Lance format Lance Rust Toolchain

Knowledge Sources	Lance Rust Edition Guide
Domains	Infrastructure, Build_System
Last Updated	2026-02-08 19:00 GMT

Overview

Rust 1.90.0 toolchain (MSRV 1.88.0) with Edition 2021, requiring rustfmt, clippy, and rust-analyzer components for the Lance columnar data format workspace.

Description

The Lance project is a Rust workspace of 20+ crates that compile together. The toolchain is pinned to Rust 1.90.0 via `rust-toolchain.toml` to keep clippy and rustfmt behaviour consistent between local development and CI. The Minimum Supported Rust Version (MSRV) is 1.88.0, verified in CI. The workspace uses Rust Edition 2021 and resolver version 2.

Usage

This environment is required for all Rust compilation in the Lance project, including the main `lance` crate, all sub-crates (lance-core, lance-encoding, lance-index, lance-io, lance-linalg, lance-table, etc.), and the Python/Java binding crates. Any Implementation that compiles Rust code requires this environment.

System Requirements

Category	Requirement	Notes
OS	Linux, macOS, or Windows	Full CI coverage on all three
Hardware	x86_64 or aarch64 CPU	loongarch64 also partially supported
Disk	10GB+ SSD	For cargo build cache and target directory

Dependencies

System Packages

`protobuf-compiler` (protoc) — required unless the `protoc` feature flag is enabled for vendored protobuf
`libssl-dev` — required on Linux for TLS support
`pkg-config` — required on ARM64 Linux builds
`clang` / `clang++` — required as C/C++ compiler for SIMD kernel compilation and general builds
`mold` (optional) — used in CI as a faster linker via `rui314/setup-mold`

Rust Toolchain

Rust channel: `1.90.0` (pinned)
Components: `rustfmt`, `clippy`, `rust-analyzer`
Edition: `2021`
MSRV: `1.88.0`
Resolver: `2`

Key Cargo Dependencies

`arrow` = 57.0.0 — Apache Arrow integration
`tokio` >= 1.23 — Async runtime
`prost` = 0.14.1 — Protocol Buffers
`datafusion` = 51.0.0 — Query engine
`object_store` = 0.12.3 — Cloud storage abstraction
`tantivy` = 0.24.1 — Full-text search engine
`roaring` = 0.10.1 — Bitmap data structure
`half` = 2.1 — Float16 support

Credentials

No credentials are required for the Rust toolchain itself. Cloud storage credentials are documented in Environment:Lance_format_Lance_Cloud_Storage_Credentials.

Quick Install

# Install Rust toolchain (pinned version will be read from rust-toolchain.toml)
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

# Install system dependencies (Ubuntu/Debian)
sudo apt-get install -y protobuf-compiler libssl-dev pkg-config clang

# Verify toolchain
rustc --version  # Should show 1.90.0
cargo check --workspace --tests --benches

Code Evidence

Toolchain pinning from `rust-toolchain.toml:1-5`:

# We keep this pinned to keep clippy and rustfmt in sync between local and CI.
# Feel free to upgrade to bring in new lints.
[toolchain]
channel = "1.90.0"
components = ["rustfmt", "clippy", "rust-analyzer"]

MSRV from `Cargo.toml:50`:

rust-version = "1.88.0"

Workspace edition from `Cargo.toml:31`:

edition = "2021"

Common Errors

Error Message	Cause	Solution
`error: package lance-core v3.0.0-beta.2 cannot be built because it requires rustc 1.88.0`	Rust toolchain too old	Run `rustup update` or let `rust-toolchain.toml` auto-select
`error: could not find protoc`	protobuf-compiler not installed	`sudo apt-get install protobuf-compiler` or enable `protoc` feature flag
`error: linker cc not found`	Missing C compiler	`sudo apt-get install build-essential clang`

Compatibility Notes

Windows: fp16 SIMD kernels are not supported. The build will emit a warning and skip kernel compilation.
macOS: XCode 15.4 is used in CI. XCode 15.0.1 has known issues with backtraces.
Linux ARM64: Requires `pkg-config` and `libssl-dev` in addition to standard dependencies.
Nightly Rust: Used in CI for code coverage (`llvm-cov`). Not required for development.

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