Stable Rust support

[broccoliSpicy]

Hey! Fantastic work here!
I am trying to introduce this crate to lance but lance builds on stable rust, is there any plan to support build this awesome crate on stable rust?

[gatesn]

We currently use const generic expressions to specialize generated code for each bit width.

I imagine it is possible to remove this requirement with some setup of macros that embeds the bit-widths into the function name and leans heavily on the compiler's const evaluation.

I'd consider merging such a PR, provided the API remains sane, the code remains small, and bitpacking remains a reusable kernel inside other encodings like Delta. But it's not something we'll have time to do unless we ourselves have a requirement to move onto stable Rust.

[broccoliSpicy]

Thanks for the response! @gatesn

At the moment I only use two trait functions unchecked_pack and unchecked_unpack for bitpacking, I modified these two functions into stable rust and put the code in my lance PR, given both projects are Apache 2.0 licensed.

I'd consider merging such a PR, provided the API remains sane, the code remains small, and bitpacking remains a reusable kernel inside other encodings like Delta. But it's not something we'll have time to do unless we ourselves have a requirement to move onto stable Rust.

I would love to work on such a PR to make this awesome crate rust stable in the future!