Getting started

The first thing you will need to do, if you want to follow along with the examples, is to acquire a copy of Rust. This is the programming language that differential dataflow uses, and it is in charge of building our projects.

With Rust in hand, crack open a shell and make a new project using Rust build manager cargo.

cargo new my_project

This should create a new folder called my_project, and you can wander in there and type

cargo run

This will do something reassuring but pointless, like print Hello, world!, because we haven't gotten differential dataflow involved yet. I mean, it's Rust and you could learn that, but you probably want to read a different web page in that case.

Instead, edit your Cargo.toml file, which tells Rust about your dependencies, to look like this:

[package]
name = "my_project"
version = "0.1.0"
authors = ["Your Name <your_name@you.ch>"]

[dependencies]
timely = { git = "https://github.com/TimelyDataflow/timely-dataflow" }
differential-dataflow = { git = "https://github.com/TimelyDataflow/differential-dataflow" }

You should only need to add those last two lines there, which bring in dependencies on both timely dataflow and differential dataflow. We will be using both of those.

You should now be ready to go. Code examples should mostly work, and you should complain (or file an issue) if they do not!