Installation

go get github.com/advenn/ursus

That is the whole install. ursus is pure Go, with three direct dependencies, Apache Arrow's Go library, klauspost's compression and golang.org/x/text: no cgo, no C or C++ toolchain, no Python runtime and no sidecar process. It cross-compiles like any other Go module.

Requirements

Go 1.27 or newer. Two of its changes are load-bearing:

• generic methods are why df.Column[int64]("qty"), df.Rows[Sale]() and Series[T].Map[U] exist at all;
• a generic method still cannot satisfy an interface, so every public type is a concrete struct, and the polymorphism is kept in unexported interfaces.

Your first program

Make a module and add ursus to it:

mkdir hello && cd hello
go mod init hello
go get github.com/advenn/ursus

Put this in main.go and go run .:

main.go

package main

import (
    "context"
    "fmt"
    "log"

    "github.com/advenn/ursus"
)

func main() {
    df, err := ursus.Frame(
        ursus.Values("name", []string{"ursus", "polars", "pandas"}),
        ursus.Values("language", []string{"Go", "Rust", "Python"}),
    ).Filter(ursus.Col("language").Eq("Go")).Collect(context.Background())
    if err != nil {
        log.Fatal(err)
    }
    fmt.Println(df)
}

Output

shape: (1, 2)
┌─────────┬──────────┐
│ name    │ language │
│ String  │ String   │
├─────────┼──────────┤
│ "ursus" │ "Go"     │
└─────────┴──────────┘

SIMD kernels

ursus's compute kernels have SIMD versions for amd64, behind Go's simd experiment. They are optional: switch them on when you build,

GOEXPERIMENT=simd go build ./...

and without the experiment, or on another architecture, every kernel falls back to its scalar twin. That fallback is not a promise but a test: CI runs the whole suite with the experiment off on every push, as it runs it at four vector widths with it on. The flag buys speed, not correctness.

GOAMD64=v3 lets the Go compiler use AVX2, FMA and BMI in ordinary code too. ursus's own builds and benchmarks use it; any amd64 machine from the last decade has them.

Platforms

ursus runs wherever Go does. Its memory limit, on by default at half the memory the machine or the container allows, reads that allowance on Linux (cgroups included), macOS and Windows.

Versions

ursus is on ZeroVer, at 0.x, and a stable 1.0 is not expected yet. Go's rule for v0 applies: a release may rename, remove or reshape an API, and the changelog lists each release's breaks with their replacements. Pin a version in your go.mod, and read the changelog before you move.

These docs are versioned too: the selector at the top of the page switches between releases, and dev is the development branch.