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May 7, 2025
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Update top-level readme with project status and refactoring note #1097

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Expand Up @@ -9,6 +9,31 @@ A Rust implementation of the [GeoArrow](https://github.com/geoarrow/geoarrow) sp

This repository also includes [Python bindings](https://github.com/geoarrow/geoarrow-rs/blob/main/python/README.md) and [JavaScript (WebAssembly) bindings](https://github.com/geoarrow/geoarrow-rs/blob/main/js/README.md), wrapping the GeoArrow memory layout and offering vectorized geometry operations.

## Project Status

May 7, 2025

The `geoarrow-rs` project is about 3 years old. Early prototyping started inside the [`geopolars`](https://github.com/geopolars/geopolars) repo before deciding I needed something more general (not tied to Polars) and creating first [`geopolars/geoarrow`](https://github.com/geopolars/geoarrow) and then lastly [`geoarrow/geoarrow-rs`](https://github.com/geoarrow/geoarrow-rs).

However despite its age, the `geoarrow` crate suffers from a couple issues. For one, it took a while to figure out the right abstractions. And learning Rust at the same time didn't help. The `geoarrow` crate is also too monolithic. Some parts of `geoarrow` are production ready, but there's decidedly a _lot_ of code in `geoarrow` that is _not_ production ready. And it's very much not clear which parts of `geoarrow` are production ready or not.

But I think `geoarrow-rs` has potential to form part of the core geospatial data engineering stack in Rust. And as part of that, we need a better delineation of which parts of the code are stable or not. As such, the `geoarrow-rs` repo is **currently ongoing a large refactor from a single crate to a monorepo of smaller crates, each with a more well-defined scope**.

As of May 2025, avoid using the `geoarrow` crate and instead use the newer crates with a smaller scope, like `geoarrow-array`.

These smaller crates are designed to mimic the upstream `arrow` crates as much as possible.

### Stability

- `geoarrow-schema`: Pretty stable
- `geoarrow-array`: Pretty stable
- `geoarrow-cast`: Pretty stable
- `geoarrow-flatgeobuf`: Somewhat stable.
- `geoarrow-geoparquet`: Somewhat stable. A decently large refactor is expected in https://github.com/geoarrow/geoarrow-rs/pull/1089.
- Other Rust crates: unstable
- Python bindings: unstable
- JS bindings: unstable

## Documentation

[**Documentation Website**](https://geoarrow.org/geoarrow-rs/)
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