`TableCreation::format_version` is ignored when creating a table using the Iceberg REST catalog interface

[JosephLenton]

Apache Iceberg Rust version

None

Describe the bug

When using the Rest catalog, the TableCreation::format_version is silently ignored and never used. The result is you can't set a table to be V3 when using format_version and a REST catalog.

Steps to reproduce

• Spin up a Rest catalog (say Polaris), and use that.
• Make a new table.
• Set it to use format_version(FormatVersion::V3)
• Then add a V3 column, and try to use the table.
• Outcome: the table is in V2 format (not v3).

The table building code would be something like this:

let table = TableCreation::builder()
    .name(table_name)
    .schema(table_schema)
    .format_version(FormatVersion::V3) // <-- this call here is ignored
    .build();

Context

In the Rest catalog.rs here the tables .properties are passed, and format_version is never used: https://github.com/apache/iceberg-rust/blob/main/crates/catalog/rest/src/catalog.rs#L794-L815

A fix could be to either add it to the properties here, or add it to the properties upstream.

Workaround

Set the table properties to use V3 by hand like so:

let table = TableCreation::builder()
    .name(table_name)
    .schema(table_schema)
    .partition_spec(table_partition_spec)
    .properties(HashMap::from([
        // Format v3 is needed as we are using nanosecond times.
        (
            TableProperties::PROPERTY_FORMAT_VERSION.to_string(),
            "3".to_string(),
        ),
    ]))
    .build();

To Reproduce

No response

Expected behavior

• The format version set by format_version should be used, when it is set on it's own.

I'm not 100% sure what should happen when setting the version by both format_version and properties, or if we even care about having precise behaviour there.

Willingness to contribute

I can contribute a fix for this bug independently