Casky – Lightweight C Key-Value Engine with Crash Recovery by pperego

Description

Casky is a lightweight, crash-safe key-value store written in C, designed for fast storage and retrieval of data with a minimal footprint. Built using Test-Driven Development (TDD), Casky ensures reliability while keeping the codebase clean and maintainable. It is inspired by Bitcask and aims to provide a simple, embeddable storage engine that can be integrated into microservices, IoT devices, and other C-based applications.

Objectives:

• Implement a minimal key-value store with append-only file storage.
• Support crash-safe persistence and recovery.
• Expose a simple public API: store(key, value), load(key), delete(key).
• Follow TDD methodology for robust and testable code.
• Provide a foundation for future extensions, such as in-memory caching, compaction, and eventual integration with vector-based databases like PixelDB.

Why This Project is Interesting:

Casky combines low-level C programming with modern database concepts, making it an ideal playground to explore storage engines, crash safety, and performance optimization. It’s small enough to complete during Hackweek, yet it provides a solid base for future experiments and more complex projects.

Goals

• Working prototype with append-only storage and memtable.
• TDD test suite covering core functionality and recovery.
• Demonstration of basic operations: insert, load, delete.
• Optional bonus: LRU caching, file compaction, performance benchmarks.

Future Directions:

After Hackweek, Casky can evolve into a backend engine for projects like PixelDB, supporting vector storage and approximate nearest neighbor search, combining low-level performance with cutting-edge AI retrieval applications.

Resources

The Bitcask paper: https://riak.com/assets/bitcask-intro.pdf The Casky repository: https://github.com/thesp0nge/casky

Technical talks at universities by agamez

Description

This project aims to empower the next generation of tech professionals by offering hands-on workshops on containerization and Kubernetes, with a strong focus on open-source technologies. By providing practical experience with these cutting-edge tools and fostering a deep understanding of open-source principles, we aim to bridge the gap between academia and industry.

For now, the scope is limited to Spanish universities, since we already have the contacts and have started some conversations.

Goals

• Technical Skill Development: equip students with the fundamental knowledge and skills to build, deploy, and manage containerized applications using open-source tools like Kubernetes.
• Open-Source Mindset: foster a passion for open-source software, encouraging students to contribute to open-source projects and collaborate with the global developer community.
• Career Readiness: prepare students for industry-relevant roles by exposing them to real-world use cases, best practices, and open-source in companies.

Resources

• Instructors: experienced open-source professionals with deep knowledge of containerization and Kubernetes.
• SUSE Expertise: leverage SUSE's expertise in open-source technologies to provide insights into industry trends and best practices.