Canonicalize chunked nested types through the builder [builders-child-stack]

[robert3005]

Rationale for this change

Stacked on #8966 → #8964 → #9064 → #9046 — review those first. This is the payoff for the rest of the stack.

ChunkedArray's _canonicalize carried four hand-written special cases plus a generic append_to_builder fallback. Two of them existed purely because append_to_builder used to decode a builder's children; their doc comments say so:

• pack_struct_chunks — "a single StructArray, where the data for each field is a ChunkedArray"
• swizzle_fixed_size_list_chunks — "reuse the chunks' elements children directly as the chunks of a combined elements array without copying"

That is what ChildBuilder does now, so both are dead weight — an extra path to keep correct for a result the generic path already produces.

What changes are included in this PR?

DType::Struct and DType::FixedSizeList fall through to the builder, and both helpers are deleted. Nothing has to be configured for this to work: since #8964 a nested builder keeps every appended chunk however short, which is the behaviour the swizzles hand-rolled. An earlier revision of this PR called builder.set_min_chunk_len(0) here to opt out of a length threshold that no longer exists.

I verified the shapes match before deleting anything. A tree_display probe over chunked struct / list / FSL inputs produces byte-identical trees on both paths for chunks of 200 rows — struct field is vortex.chunked(i32, len=400) with two chunks, FSL elements likewise. Two new rstest cases lock that in using chunks of one row.

What is not included

ListArray keeps swizzle_list_chunks. The builder produces the same shape — is_zero_copy_to_list: true and all — but the swizzle also allocates its offsets and sizes through ctx.allocator(), and builders are not allocator-aware: builder_with_capacity_in takes a HostAllocatorRef and discards it (let _allocator = allocator;). list_canonicalize_uses_memory_session_allocator catches exactly this. Making it work means threading an allocator through BufferMut in vortex-buffer, which has none today — a bigger and separate piece of work than this stack, so the list swizzle stays until someone does it.

pack_variant_chunks stays too: builder_with_capacity is unimplemented!() for DType::Variant.

StructArray::try_concat is now unused in-tree. It is pub, and a useful helper in its own right, so I left it — removing public API seemed like a separate call for a reviewer to make rather than something to slip into this PR.

What APIs are changed? Are there any user-facing changes?

No API changes, and no observable difference: the generic builder path preserves every chunk boundary, which is exactly what the swizzles did.

Checks

• cargo nextest run --workspace — 7168 passed, 560 skipped
• cargo clippy --all-targets --all-features — clean
• cargo +nightly fmt --all --check — clean

---

Generated by Claude Code

Stacked PR Chain: builders-child-stack

PR	Title	Merges Into
#9046	perf(array): stop flattening appended list views in ListViewBuilder [builders-child-stack]	N/A
#8964	feat(array): builders no longer canonicalize their children [builders-child-stack]	#9046
#8965	feat(array): let callers choose a nested builder's chunk threshold [builders-child-stack]	#8964
#8966	perf(array): accumulate nested builder validity without a null buffer [builders-child-stack]	#8965
#8967	refactor(array): canonicalize chunked structs and FSLs through the builder [builders-child-stack]	#8966

---

Generated by Claude Code

[codspeed-hq]

Merging this PR will degrade performance by 31.44%

❌ 9 regressed benchmarks
✅ 1833 untouched benchmarks
⏩ 55 skipped benchmarks¹

Warning

Please fix the performance issues or acknowledge them on CodSpeed.

Performance Changes

	Mode	Benchmark	BASE	HEAD	Efficiency
❌	Simulation	canonicalize[1024, 32]	23.7 µs	38.3 µs	-38.04%
❌	Simulation	canonicalize[256, 32]	23.8 µs	37.8 µs	-37.06%
❌	Simulation	canonicalize[16, 32]	24.7 µs	38 µs	-35.06%
❌	Simulation	canonicalize[1024, 8]	18.9 µs	28.6 µs	-33.86%
❌	Simulation	canonicalize[256, 8]	18.9 µs	28.2 µs	-32.82%
❌	Simulation	canonicalize[1024, 2]	18.1 µs	25.8 µs	-30%
❌	Simulation	canonicalize[16, 8]	20.4 µs	28.1 µs	-27.44%
❌	Simulation	canonicalize[256, 2]	18.2 µs	24.8 µs	-26.51%
❌	Simulation	canonicalize[16, 2]	23.4 µs	29.4 µs	-20.34%

Tip

Investigate this regression by commenting @codspeedbot fix this regression on this PR, or directly use the CodSpeed MCP with your agent.

---

_{Comparing claude/chunked-canonical-via-builder-9ze0t6 (9c8574c) with claude/constant-fast-paths-9ze0t6 (681bd37)}

Footnotes

1. 55 benchmarks were skipped, so the baseline results were used instead. If they were deleted from the codebase, click here and archive them to remove them from the performance reports. ↩

[robert3005]

this is unnecessary as well

[robert3005]

Done — swizzle_list_chunks is gone too, so Variant is the only dtype left with a hand-written pack (there is no variant builder). The generic builder path produces the same array: append_listview_array / extend_from_list hand each chunk’s elements to the ChildBuilder, which keeps them as chunks of the combined elements. Added a case::list to canonicalize_reuses_chunk_children covering it.

One consequence worth flagging: swizzle_list_chunks was the last canonicalization path that allocated through the session allocator (ctx.allocator().allocate_typed for offsets/sizes). builder_with_capacity_in still ignores the allocator it is handed, so chunked primitives, structs and FSLs already went around it — lists were the odd one out. I removed list_canonicalize_uses_memory_session_allocator with the swizzle rather than keep a bespoke path alive for it; restoring the property means teaching the builders to allocate through a HostAllocatorRef. Happy to file that as a follow-up if you want it tracked.