Crate
vowpalwabbit-sys
vowpalwabbit	...

This repo provides:

• DLL which wraps VowpalWabbit
• Sys crate providing access to this DLL's API
• Crate providing a safe rust interface to VowpalWabbit as well as other utilities

The major and minor versions of the sys crate track that of the native VW library that is wraps. The patch version, though, may be out of sync due to the need to patch the crate out of sync with the native dependency. Starting at version 8.8.1+vw-v8.8.0 you can determine the version of Vowpal Wabbit that it wraps by looking at the associated SemVer metadata. In this case it is vw-v8.8.0 indicating the wrapped Vowpal Wabbit version is 8.8.0.

The non-sys crate simply depends on some version of the sys crate which can be used to determine the VowpalWabbit version wrapped. The crate itself is versioned monotonically with potentially several releases per native VW release.

All versions prior to 9.3.0 used a different scheme for binding and interfacing with the VowpalWabbit library. Therefore, these instruction apply for 9.3.0 onwards.

The VowpalWabbit-sys crate searches for a library called vw_rs_bindings. This needs to be findable on your system in order to use the bindings.

git submodule update --init
cd binding
cmake --preset=vcpkg
cmake --build --preset=vcpkg

git submodule update --init
cd binding
cmake --preset=vcpkg
cmake --build --preset=vcpkg

The following MUST be run in an x64 developer tools prompt. Not using 64 bit will cause issues later when the DLL is loaded.

git submodule update --init
cd binding
cmake --preset=vcpkg-windows
cmake --build --preset=vcpkg-windows

Set environment variable VW_RS_BINDING_HOME to the binding/build directory.

On Windows add the binding/build directory to the path. On Ubuntu set LD_LIBRARY_PATH to binding/build. On MacOS set DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH to binding/build.

sudo cmake --install build --strip

# Make sure this is set when running cargo
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/lib:/usr/lib:/usr/local/lib

sudo cmake --install build --strip

The following MUST be run in an admin prompt.

cmake --install build --strip

In powershell:

# Assumes C drive
$env:Path += ';C:/Program Files (x86)/vowpalwabbit-rs-bindings/bin/'
[System.Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable('VW_RS_BINDING_HOME','C:/Program Files (x86)/vowpalwabbit-rs-bindings',[System.EnvironmentVariableTarget]::User)