[python-package] Allow to pass Arrow table for prediction

[borchero]

Motivation

This is the last of a series of PRs towards #6022 and depends on #6167.

For a legible diff, see borchero/LightGBM@arrow-support-init-scores...arrow-support-inference.

[jameslamb]

Changes look good to me! Thanks for the attention to detail you took in following the existing patterns in the project.

But before we merge this, I'd like to see the tests cover more of the predict() interface. predict() in LightGBM does a lot of different things and its behavior is dependent on the type of machine learning task. I left a suggestion with specific requests for the types of tests I'd like to see.

[jameslamb]

Looks great to me, thank you!

@guolinke or @shiyu1994 could you help with one more review on the c_api changes?

[guolinke]

LGTM

[jameslamb]

Thank you!

When this builds, I'll merge this. And with that, v4.2.0 will have broad pyarrow support 🙌🏻

Awesome work on this @borchero , thank you so much!!

[borchero]

Awesome! @jameslamb: thanks a lot for waiting with v4.2.0 to include Arrow support and, in particular, for all your help getting Arrow support into this package 🫶🏼

[jameslamb]

@borchero would you like to join LightGBM as a maintainer?

If that interests you, send me an email or LinkedIn message (see the contact info at https://github.com/jameslamb) and I can give you more details 😁

[github-actions]

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