Xgboost: Feature request: Add a Rust API

[gregsifr]

This is a feature request to add a Rust API to xgboost.

[hcho3]

It shouldn't be too difficult to call C functions from Rust. Every feature of XGBoost is exposed as C API functions, on which every other language bindings (Python, R, JVM, Julia) depend.

[davechallis]

I've recently started working on this, have the C API bindings just about working, then will start on some higher level functionality.

[hcho3]

Consolidating to #3439. Feel free to re-open this issue if you have any update on Rust API.

[davechallis]

Happy for this to be re-opened (I'm not sure I have permissions), have made some progress on this here: https://github.com/davechallis/rust-xgboost

API is still very unstable (changing as I find out about parts of XGBoost that were previously unknown to me), but here's how some basic functionality currently looks: https://github.com/davechallis/rust-xgboost/blob/master/examples/basic/src/main.rs

[tqchen]

@davechallis Can you open a separate PR with list of actionable items? So that you can track it as a owner

[davechallis]

@tqchen Good idea, I'll try and get that together when I can. There are still quite a few things I'm experimenting with to work out the best way forward, but after that I should have a better idea of a roadmap to getting the API release.

[hcho3]

@davechallis How is your progress with Rust binding?

[davechallis]

@hcho3 Going well so far - I've got a 0.1.0 release ready, just trying to solve some packaging issue, then it should be ready. Just got back from holiday, so will hopefully try and work on that this weekend.

[davechallis]

I've now published the initial Rust release of XGBoost bindings, built against v0.80 of XGBoost:

This consists of two crates:

• xgboost (high level library)
• xgboost-sys (low level FFI bindings from bindgen)

Supports many major features of XGBoost, tested on linux/osx (windows not supported at the moment).

Feedback welcome, still working on making the API and configuration more ergonomic.

Links

• crate
• source
• docs

[liufuyang]

Is this Rust API still maintained? Also there is no official document on https://xgboost.readthedocs.io/ to show how to use it in Rust.