Hacktoberfest 2026: the issues maintainers tagged for October, open and beginner-friendly. Browse Hacktoberfest issues

Bug: dynamic_partition_overwrite silently skips spec-0 manifests after partition spec evolution

Open
#3,148 1 comment 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Assessment

Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Newbie friendliness
70/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Clearly specified
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
python
Domain
databases

Research direction

Start in table/init.py at Table.dynamic_partition_overwrite, then trace _build_partition_projection and the manifest-pruning change from #3011. Reproduce the mixed spec-0/spec-1 snapshot described in the issue and compare with the prior related fix in #1108. Done means a regression test confirms overwriting removes matching rows from both historical specs without deleting unrelated data.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

stale

Summary

dynamic_partition_overwrite produces incorrect results when a table has undergone
partition spec evolution. Manifests written under older specs are silently skipped
by the manifest pruning logic introduced in #3011, leaving stale data files that
should have been deleted.

Root cause

In Table.dynamic_partition_overwrite (table/__init__.py), the delete predicate
is built using only the current partition spec:

delete_filter = self._build_partition_predicate(
    partition_records=partitions_to_overwrite,
    spec=self.table_metadata.spec(),       # always current spec
    schema=self.table_metadata.schema()
)

A snapshot with mixed partition_spec_ids (spec-0 and spec-1 manifests) passes
this single predicate to _DeleteFiles. The manifest evaluator in _build_partition_projection
uses inclusive_projection(schema, spec) — when projecting a spec-1 predicate
(e.g. category=A AND region=us) through spec-0 (which only has category), the
region reference has no corresponding partition field, causing the evaluator to
incorrectly skip spec-0 manifests entirely.

Reproduction

import tempfile, pyarrow as pa
from pyiceberg.catalog import load_catalog
from pyiceberg.schema import Schema
from pyiceberg.types import NestedField, StringType, LongType
from pyiceberg.partitioning import PartitionSpec, PartitionField
from pyiceberg.transforms import IdentityTransform

schema = Schema(
    NestedField(1, "category", StringType(), required=False),
    NestedField(2, "region",   StringType(), required=False),
    NestedField(3, "value",    LongType(),   required=False),
)
spec_v0 = PartitionSpec(
    PartitionField(source_id=1, field_id=1000, transform=IdentityTransform(), name="category")
)

with tempfile.TemporaryDirectory() as warehouse:
    catalog = load_catalog("test", **{"type": "sql", "uri": f"sqlite:///{warehouse}/catalog.db", "warehouse": f"file://{warehouse}"})
    catalog.create_namespace("default")
    table = catalog.create_table("default.test", schema=schema, partition_spec=spec_v0)

    # Write under spec 0
    table.append(pa.table({"category": ["A","A","B"], "region": [None,None,None], "value": [1,2,10]}))

    # Evolve spec
    with table.update_spec() as u:
        u.add_field("region", IdentityTransform(), "region")
    table = catalog.load_table("default.test")

    # Write under spec 1
    table.append(pa.table({"category": ["A","B"], "region": ["us","us"], "value": [100,200]}))

    # Overwrite category=A — should delete ALL A rows (both specs)
    table.dynamic_partition_overwrite(
        pa.table({"category": ["A"], "region": ["us"], "value": [999]})
    )

    result = table.scan().to_arrow().to_pydict()
    a_values = [v for c,v in zip(result["category"], result["value"]) if c == "A"]
    print(a_values)  # BUG: prints [1, 2, 100, 999] — stale rows from spec-0 not deleted
                     # EXPECTED: [999]

Fix

Build the delete predicate per historical spec present in the snapshot, projecting
the new data files' partition values into each spec's coordinate space before evaluating.
PR with fix and regression tests to follow.

Related

  • #3011 (introduced the manifest pruning optimization)
  • #1108 (prior related fix by @Fokko for spec evolution in manifest rewriting)
Dominant language
Python
Stars
1.1k
Forks
589
Avg merge
2d 2h
Merged PRs (30d)
70

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

More from apache/iceberg-python

All issues in apache/iceberg-python

Similar issues

More Python issues

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.