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Documentation Index

Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://mintlify.com/nimdeveloper/better-duck/llms.txt

Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

Adding better-duck to a Rust project is a single Cargo.toml edit — no system DuckDB library, no pkg-config, and no LLVM required. DuckDB is compiled from a vendored C++ source archive inside better-duck-sys the first time you build, then cached by Cargo like any other compiled dependency. The minimum supported Rust version is 1.96.

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Adding Dependencies

Choose the crates you need and paste the snippet below into your [dependencies] table. Use better-duck-core alone for direct SQL access, or add better-duck-diesel when you want the full Diesel 2.3 query DSL and migration support. 
[dependencies]
# Core only — direct SQL access, full type system, async, pool, and UDF support
better-duck-core = "0.1.0-beta.4"

# Or: Core + Diesel ORM backend
better-duck-core   = "0.1.0-beta.4"
better-duck-diesel = "0.1.0-beta.4"
You can also use the Cargo CLI to add a crate: 
cargo add better-duck-core --version 0.1.0-beta.4
Cargo’s default SemVer resolver excludes pre-release versions. A version requirement written as "0.1" will never resolve to 0.1.0-beta.4. You must write the exact pre-release string — "0.1.0-beta.4" — or pass --version 0.1.0-beta.4 to cargo add. This is standard Cargo behaviour for any -alpha/-beta/-rc suffix.

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Feature Flags

better-duck-core ships with two features enabled by default — chrono date/time support and rust_decimal support — and several opt-in features for richer integrations. Compiling DuckDB from the vendored source archive is unconditional in 0.1.0-beta.4 and requires no feature flag.
FeatureDefaultDescription
chrono✓chrono date/time conversions for DATE, TIME, TIMESTAMP, TIMESTAMPTZ, and INTERVAL columns.
decimal✓rust_decimal::Decimal support for DECIMAL columns.
json—Enable DuckDB’s JSON extension.
parquet—Enable DuckDB’s Parquet extension.
async—Tokio-based async facade (AsyncConnection, AsyncDatabase, AsyncPool) wrapping the synchronous connection in tokio::task::spawn_blocking. Requires a Tokio runtime.
pool—r2d2 connection pool backed by a shared Database handle, so all pooled connections share one database instance.
udf—#[duckdb_scalar] and #[duckdb_table_function] attribute macros for registering plain Rust functions as DuckDB scalar or table functions.

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Build Requirements

better-duck is designed to have minimal build-time requirements for the common case:
  • No system DuckDB installation. DuckDB is bundled as a vendored C++ source archive inside better-duck-sys. The cc crate compiles it transparently during cargo build.
  • C++ compiler. The cc crate requires a C++ compiler to be present on the build host (e.g. gcc/g++ on Linux, Xcode Command Line Tools on macOS, MSVC or MinGW on Windows). This is almost always already present in a Rust development environment.
  • Rust 1.96 or later (MSRV). The entire workspace sets rust-version = "1.96" in [workspace.package]. Earlier toolchains will be rejected by Cargo.
  • Pre-generated FFI bindings. better-duck-sys ships with FFI bindings already checked in for all supported platforms, so no bindgen or LLVM installation is required on the build host.

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Enabling Optional Features

Specify optional features inline in your Cargo.toml dependency entry using the features key: 
[dependencies]
# Enable async support, the r2d2 connection pool, and user-defined functions
better-duck-core = { version = "0.1.0-beta.4", features = ["async", "pool", "udf"] }
To enable all features at once (useful for exploring the full API in a scratch project): 
[dependencies]
better-duck-core = { version = "0.1.0-beta.4", features = ["async", "pool", "udf", "json", "parquet"] }
To turn off a default feature — for example, if you do not need chrono and want to use the built-in DuckDate/DuckTime structs instead: 
[dependencies]
better-duck-core = { version = "0.1.0-beta.4", default-features = false, features = ["decimal"] }
For better-duck-diesel with chrono and r2d2: 
[dependencies]
better-duck-core   = "0.1.0-beta.4"
better-duck-diesel = { version = "0.1.0-beta.4", features = ["chrono", "r2d2"] }

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