Vortex DuckDB

This repository is based on https://github.com/duckdb/extension-template, check it out if you want to build and ship your own DuckDB extension.

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Building

Install required system dependencies

MacOS

brew install pkg-config

Managing dependencies

DuckDB extensions uses VCPKG for dependency management. Enabling VCPKG is very simple: follow the installation instructions or just run the following:

git clone https://github.com/Microsoft/vcpkg.git
./vcpkg/bootstrap-vcpkg.sh
export VCPKG_TOOLCHAIN_PATH=`pwd`/vcpkg/scripts/buildsystems/vcpkg.cmake

Note: VCPKG is only required for extensions that want to rely on it for dependency management. If you want to develop an extension without dependencies, or want to do your own dependency management, just skip this step. Note that the example extension uses VCPKG to build with a dependency for instructive purposes, so when skipping this step the build may not work without removing the dependency.

Build steps

Now to build the extension, run:

make

The extension CMake requires DUCKDB_VERSION to be set such that Vortex can build against a pinned version. When building outside of CI, a version can be passed as -DDUCKDB_VERSION=<duckdb-version> to CMake.

The main binaries that will be built are:

./build/release/duckdb
./build/release/test/unittest
./build/release/extension/vortex_duckdb/vortex_duckdb.duckdb_extension

• duckdb is the binary for the duckdb shell with the extension code automatically loaded.
• unittest is the test runner of duckdb. Again, the extension is already linked into the binary.
• vortex_duckdb.duckdb_extension is the loadable binary as it would be distributed.

Running the extension

To run the extension code, simply start the shell with ./build/release/duckdb.

Writing a file

To write a table to a vortex file use COPY .. TO '...' (FORMAT VORTEX):

COPY (SELECT * from generate_series(0, 4)) TO 'FILENAME.vortex' (FORMAT VORTEX);

This will create a compressed vortex file from the sql table.

Reading a file

To read a table from a vortex file:

select * from read_vortex('FILENAME.vortex');

This command also supports glob syntax e.g. read_vortex('FILE_WITH_GLOB*.vortex').

Running the tests

Different tests can be created for DuckDB extensions. The primary way of testing DuckDB extensions should be the SQL tests in ./test/sql. These SQL tests can be run using:

make test

Installing the deployed binaries

To install your extension binaries from S3, you will need to do two things. Firstly, DuckDB should be launched with the allow_unsigned_extensions option set to true. How to set this will depend on the client you're using. Some examples:

CLI:

duckdb -unsigned

Python:

con = duckdb.connect(':memory:', config={'allow_unsigned_extensions': 'true'})

NodeJS:

db = new duckdb.Database(":memory:", { allow_unsigned_extensions: "true" });

Secondly, you will need to set the repository endpoint in DuckDB to the HTTP url of your bucket + version of the extension you want to install. To do this run the following SQL query in DuckDB:

SET
custom_extension_repository='bucket.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/<your_extension_name>/latest';

Note that the /latest path will allow you to install the latest extension version available for your current version of DuckDB. To specify a specific version, you can pass the version instead.

After running these steps, you can install and load your extension using the regular INSTALL/LOAD commands in DuckDB:

INSTALL
vortex_duckdb
LOAD vortex_duckdb

Debugging

To build the extension in debug mode, run:

make debug

This will create debug binaries in the ./build/debug directory, which can be used with a debugger for troubleshooting and development.

./build/debug/duckdb -unsigned
RUST_BACKTRACE=1 ./build/debug/duckdb -unsigned
lldb -- ./build/debug/duckdb -unsigned

Building shared Vortex library

~/duckdb-vortex make EXT_FLAGS='-DUSE_SHARED_VORTEX=1' reldebug -j

Cherry-pick workflow

When a PR is merged to main, the cherry-pick workflow automatically applies the squash commit to the current release branch.

The current release branch is configured in .github/workflows/CherryPick.yml via the RELEASE_BRANCH env var.

Changing Vortex version

The Vortex version is defined in vortex-extension/Cargo.toml. It can be a git commit, tag, branch or even a local path:

vortex-duckdb = { path = "<path/to/vortex/vortex-duckdb>"}

See the Cargo docs for git or path dependencies for full details.