buoyant_kernel is Buoyant Data's tailored distribution of the
Delta Lake kernel. Like a Linux
distribution downstream of the vanilla kernel, it lets us curate features, bug
fixes, and optimizations and ship them to Delta Lake Rust and Python users
faster than the upstream release cycle. We
wrote about the distribution model when we
first released it.
The distribution powers the deltalake crate and the deltalake Python package starting with delta-rs 1.0.0.
Installation
$ cargo add buoyant_kernel
Or from Python, install the deltalake package which bundles the kernel:
$ pip install deltalake
API documentation by release
Complete rustdoc API documentation for
every version of buoyant_kernel published to
crates.io:
| Version | API docs | Released |
|---|---|---|
| 0.28.1 (latest) | rustdoc | 2026-09-21 |
| 0.28.0 | rustdoc | 2026-09-11 |
| 0.25.1 | rustdoc | 2026-07-12 |
| 0.25.0 | rustdoc | 2026-07-07 |
| 0.22.2 | rustdoc | 2026-05-22 |
| 0.22.0 | rustdoc | 2026-05-13 |
| 0.21.200 | rustdoc | 2026-04-29 |
| 0.21.103 | rustdoc | 2026-04-19 |
| 0.21.102 | rustdoc | 2026-04-14 |
| 0.21.101 | rustdoc | 2026-04-09 |
| 0.21.100 | rustdoc | 2026-04-08 |
| 0.20.100 | rustdoc | 2026-04-08 |
Resources
- crates.io/crates/buoyant_kernel — releases and version metadata
- delta-io/delta-kernel-rs — upstream Delta Lake kernel
- delta-io/delta-rs — the Delta Lake Rust/Python implementation that consumes this kernel
- The buoyant_kernel distribution — blog post introducing the distribution model
