Rusty Conover
Data infrastructure engineer and founder of Query.Farm. Building DuckDB extensions, scaling data platforms, and writing about what I learn along the way.
Recent Activity
View all →Rusty spent the day focused on modernizing the WebAssembly build infrastructure and supporting community work across multiple DuckDB-related projects.
A productive day spanning multiple repositories across the DuckDB ecosystem and supporting infrastructure projects.
VGI RPC Libraries — Rusty released v0.6.2 and v0.6.1 across the three VGI RPC language implementations (vgi-rpc-typescript, vgi-rpc-go, and vgi-rpc-python), with multiple commits on main pushing updates to each.
VGI Injector: A Tiny HTTPS Download-and-Execute Binary in Zig
I needed a self-contained binary that downloads a program over HTTPS and exec's it — small enough to run in a FROM scratch container with nothing else. Go and Rust couldn't get small enough. Zig could.
TIME Data Type Compatibility Across Databases
A survey of the TIME data type across 14 databases, comparing supported ranges, maximum values, and whether the special value 24:00:00 is accepted.
Telemetry for DuckDB Extensions Without the Pain
I open-sourced the telemetry client I use across Query.Farm's DuckDB extensions. It's two files, one function call, and it only collects platform and version info.
Releasing vgi-rpc: An RPC Framework Built on Apache Arrow
I built an RPC framework for Python that uses Apache Arrow IPC as the wire format and Python Protocol classes as the interface definition. No .proto files, no codegen — just type annotations.
Acronym-Aware Case Conversions in the DuckDB Inflector Extension
The Inflector extension for DuckDB now supports configurable acronyms, so case conversions preserve terms like HTML, API, and URL as fully uppercase — configured through a native DuckDB setting.
DuckDB Extension Development Workshop
DuckDB Developer Meeting #1 — Amsterdam, Netherlands
Building on Flight: Real-World Lessons from the DuckDB Airport Extension
Apache Arrow Summit 2025 — Paris, France
Query.Farm: Growing DuckDB Community Extensions
DuckDB Amsterdam Meetup #3 — Amsterdam, Netherlands
What I've Been Working On
Full activity log →I've spent the last few months deeply invested in DuckDB ecosystem stewardship and cross-language infrastructure work. I led a major compatibility push across dozens of extensions while contributing upstream enhancements to Apache Arrow, then shipped a complete production-ready vgi-rpc ecosystem with unified tooling across Python, C++, Go, and TypeScript. Between infrastructure modernization, open-source gardening, and some classified operations, I've balanced systematic upgrades with delightful new features like Fair Weather Friend's PWA support and specialized weather modes.
- Spearheaded DuckDB 1.5 compatibility across 29+ repositories with 40+ PRs, standardizing documentation and future-proofing extensions like airport, shellfs, and webmacro
- Contributed upstream Arrow enhancements across JavaScript, Swift, Rust, and Go, adding custom metadata support for RecordBatch IPC messages that fixed silent data drops
- Shipped production vgi-rpc ecosystem with unified branding, Cloudflare documentation, and Apache 2.0 licensing across four language implementations