Rust bindings for the Visualization Toolkit (VTK).
This is a fork of jonaspleyer/vtk-rs focused exclusively on macOS (Apple Silicon recommended) and VTK 9.3+.
- Supported Platform: macOS ARM (M1/M2/M3 chips) - Fully tested and supported
- VTK Version: Only VTK 9.3+ via Homebrew is supported
- Linux/Windows Support: Not supported in this fork
vtk-rs/generate_headers.sh: Updated for macOS compatibilityvtk-rs/build.rs: Custom build configuration for ARM architecture
- macOS ARM-specific sed command syntax in header generation
- Custom build.rs for proper linking on Apple Silicon
- Comprehensive geometric primitives implementation (Priority 1 complete)
- FEM visualization filters (WarpVector, ContourFilter, ClipPolyData)
The goal of this project is to provide safe and thin bindings. This means we are planning to support as much of the original functionality as possible, provided that their use is reasonable from a rusty point of view. This crate does in particular not aim at formulating higher-level interfaces such as pyvista although such functionality could be added in the future within the scope of additional crates.
GitHub Actions CI runs on push and pull requests:
| Platform | Status | Environment |
|---|---|---|
macos-latest |
 |
Homebrew VTK |
macos-14 |
 |
Homebrew VTK |
macos-15 |
 |
Homebrew VTK |
All workflows include:
- Header comparison checks
- Documentation tests (
cargo test --doc) - Build verification
- License compliance (REUSE)
- Dependency audits
This package relies on a system install of vtk.
We currently only test versions >=9.1.
For this fork's primary platform, VTK must be installed via Homebrew:
brew install vtkLinux and other platforms are not supported in this fork. The build system is configured for ARM architecture and uses macOS-compatible tools.
For Ubuntu systems, install VTK development packages:
# Ubuntu 22.04 / 24.04
sudo apt install libvtk9-dev libvtk9.1
# Additional dependencies for full functionality
sudo apt install clang cmake openmpi-devNote: Linux support is actively being improved. Some features may require additional configuration.
For reference, the original implementation supported:
In some scenarios, it might be necessary to install additional dependencies.
Otherwise, compilation of the cmake part might fail with spurious linker errors.
| Distro | Packages |
|---|---|
| Archlinux | pacman -S clang cmake vtk openmpi fast_float nlohmann-json gl2ps utf8cpp |
| Ubuntu 22 & 24 | apt install libvtk9.1 libvtk9-dev |
| Macos 13 & 14 | brew install vtk |
Note: For reference only - this fork focuses on macOS ARM and Linux Ubuntu platforms.
vtk-rs will try to determine the path for vtk automatically.
This fork includes a custom build.rs that handles ARM-specific configuration:
- Run
./vtk-rs/generate_headers.shto generate CXX bridge headers (uses macOS-compatible sed) - Build with
cargo build- the custom build.rs handles VTK library detection
It is possible to control the compilation process via environment flags.
| Flag | Effect |
|---|---|
VTK_DIR |
cargo:rustc-link-search=$VTK_DIR |
VTK_VERSION |
Add suffix to vtk libraries (i.e. libvtkCommonCore-9.4). |
This crate builds on cmake and cxx
in order to generate the necessary code and bindings.
The bindings for vtk modules are written manually in C++.
From there, we generate appropriate bindings with cxx::bridge using the CLI tool
cxxbridge.
However, we do not use cxx to compile the code but rather let cmake handle this task.
To implement the desired class methods, we use Rust
macros.
- Stabilize Build system
- Automate system library detection and generate linker flags
- Gradually implement functionality for examples. Start with 3D geometry.