Project Limbo

Limbo is a project to build the next evolution of SQLite.

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Features and Roadmap

Limbo is a work-in-progress, in-process OLTP database engine library written in Rust that has:

• SQLite compatibility [doc] for SQL dialect, file formats, and the C API
• Language bindings for JavaScript/WebAssembly, Rust, Go, Python, and Java
• Asynchronous I/O support on Linux with io_uring
• OS support for Linux, macOS, and Windows

In the future, we will be also working on:

• BEGIN CONCURRENT for improved write throughput.
• Indexing for vector search.
• Improved schema management including better ALTER support and strict column types by default.

Getting Started

Please see the Limbo Database Manual for more information.

💻 Command Line

You can install the latest `limbo` release with:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -LsSf \
  https://github.com/tursodatabase/limbo/releases/latest/download/limbo_cli-installer.sh | sh

Then launch the shell to execute SQL statements:

Limbo
Enter ".help" for usage hints.
Connected to a transient in-memory database.
Use ".open FILENAME" to reopen on a persistent database
limbo> CREATE TABLE users (id INT PRIMARY KEY, username TEXT);
limbo> INSERT INTO users VALUES (1, 'alice');
limbo> INSERT INTO users VALUES (2, 'bob');
limbo> SELECT * FROM users;
1|alice
2|bob

You can also build and run the latest development version with:

cargo run

🦀 Rust

cargo add limbo

Example usage:

let db = Builder::new_local("sqlite.db").build().await?;
let conn = db.connect()?;

let res = conn.query("SELECT * FROM users", ()).await?;

✨ JavaScript

npm i limbo-wasm

Example usage:

import { Database } from 'limbo-wasm';

const db = new Database('sqlite.db');
const stmt = db.prepare('SELECT * FROM users');
const users = stmt.all();
console.log(users);

🐍 Python

pip install pylimbo

Example usage:

import limbo

con = limbo.connect("sqlite.db")
cur = con.cursor()
res = cur.execute("SELECT * FROM users")
print(res.fetchone())

🐹 Go

1. Clone the repository
2. Build the library and set your LD_LIBRARY_PATH to include limbo's target directory

cargo build --package limbo-go
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/path/to/limbo/target/debug:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH

3. Use the driver

go get github.com/tursodatabase/limbo
go install github.com/tursodatabase/limbo

Example usage:

import (
    "database/sql"
    _ "github.com/tursodatabase/limbo"
)

conn, _ = sql.Open("sqlite3", "sqlite.db")
defer conn.Close()

stmt, _ := conn.Prepare("select * from users")
defer stmt.Close()

rows, _ = stmt.Query()
for rows.Next() {
    var id int
    var username string
    _ := rows.Scan(&id, &username)
    fmt.Printf("User: ID: %d, Username: %s\n", id, username)
}

☕️ Java

We integrated Limbo into JDBC. For detailed instructions on how to use Limbo with java, please refer to the README.md under bindings/java.

Contributing

We'd love to have you contribute to Limbo! Please check out the contribution guide to get started.

FAQ

Is Limbo ready for production use?

Limbo is currently under heavy development and is not ready for production use.

How is Limbo different from Turso's libSQL?

Limbo is a project to build the next evolution of SQLite in Rust, with a strong open contribution focus and features like native async support, vector search, and more. The libSQL project is also an attempt to evolve SQLite in a similar direction, but through a fork rather than a rewrite.

Rewriting SQLite in Rust started as an unassuming experiment, and due to its incredible success, replaces libSQL as our intended direction. At this point, libSQL is production ready, Limbo is not - although it is evolving rapidly. As the project starts to near production readiness, we plan to rename it to just "Turso". More details here.

Publications

• Pekka Enberg, Sasu Tarkoma, Jon Crowcroft Ashwin Rao (2024). Serverless Runtime / Database Co-Design With Asynchronous I/O. In EdgeSys ‘24. [PDF]
• Pekka Enberg, Sasu Tarkoma, and Ashwin Rao (2023). Towards Database and Serverless Runtime Co-Design. In CoNEXT-SW ’23. [PDF] [Slides]

License

This project is licensed under the MIT license.

Contribution

Unless you explicitly state otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in Limbo by you, shall be licensed as MIT, without any additional terms or conditions.

Contributors

Thanks to all the contributors to Limbo!