open up flag

Signed-off-by: Andrew Duffy <andrew@a10y.dev>

Author: a10y

.github/workflows/bench.yml

@@ -88,7 +88,6 @@ jobs:
         shell: bash
         env:
           RUST_BACKTRACE: full
-          VORTEX_EXPERIMENTAL_PATCHED_ARRAY: 1
         run: |
           bash scripts/bench-taskset.sh target/release_debug/${{ matrix.benchmark.id }} --formats ${{ matrix.benchmark.formats }} -d gh-json -o results.json
 

.github/workflows/sql-benchmarks.yml

@@ -150,7 +150,6 @@ jobs:
         shell: bash
         env:
           RUST_BACKTRACE: full
-          VORTEX_EXPERIMENTAL_PATCHED_ARRAY: 1
         run: |
           # Extract all unique formats from targets (e.g., "datafusion:parquet,duckdb:vortex" -> "parquet,vortex")
           all_formats=$(echo "${{ matrix.targets }}" | tr ',' '\n' | sed 's/^[^:]*://' | sort -u | tr '\n' ',' | sed 's/,$//')

encodings/fastlanes/src/lib.rs

@@ -34,12 +34,20 @@ use vortex_array::aggregate_fn::session::AggregateFnSessionExt;
 use vortex_array::session::ArraySessionExt;
 use vortex_session::VortexSession;
 
-/// Check if we're using experimental patches deserialization
+/// Flag indicating if experimental patched array support is enabled.
+///
+/// This is set using the environment variable `VORTEX_EXPERIMENTAL_PATCHED_ARRAY`.
+///
+/// When this is true, any BitPacked array with interior patches will be read as a `Patched`
+/// array, and the builtin compressor will use Patched array with BitPacked instead of
+/// BitPacked array with interior patches.
 pub static USE_EXPERIMENTAL_PATCHES: LazyLock<bool> =
     LazyLock::new(|| env::var("VORTEX_EXPERIMENTAL_PATCHED_ARRAY").is_ok());
 
 /// Initialize fastlanes encodings in the given session.
 pub fn initialize(session: &VortexSession) {
+    // If we're using the experimental Patched encoding, register a shim
+    // for BitPacked with interior patches decode as Patched array.
     if *USE_EXPERIMENTAL_PATCHES {
         session.arrays().register(BitPackedPatchedPlugin);
     } else {