RustGIS README

The project's README from github.com/opengeos/RustGIS. As one markdown file: README.md.

RustGIS logo: a rust-coloured cog framing a segmented globe with an orbit

RustGIS

A fast, free and open-source GIS in pure Rust for mapping, analyzing and sharing geospatial data.
Native on Windows, macOS and Linux, and in your web browser. Your data stays on your machine unless you send it to an AI model you choose, and every action is a command you can script.

Written in Rust License: Apache-2.0 16 languages Plugins PyPI Open in Colab

Launch the RustGIS web app Download the desktop app Read the documentation

RustGIS with the Home tab of the ribbon open. The Layers pane lists Cities, Rivers, Lakes and Countries with their legends; the map shows the world in the Equal Earth projection, countries shaded by population, sized city dots and country labels.

Why RustGIS

A tour

The Style tab with the Symbology pane showing graduated colours and colour schemes; the larger African countries are selected in cyan on the map and highlighted in the attribute table below

Symbology and tables. Selecting a layer opens its contextual tabs: symbology, effects, labeling and data. Selection is synced between the map and the attribute table.

 The AI Assistant pane: asked for the five most populous African countries, it read the Countries table, selected them and zoomed to them

AI Assistant. Ask about your data or tell the map what to do. The assistant runs RustGIS commands for you, and each change can be undone.
The Analyze tab with a gallery of geoprocessing tools and the Tools pane showing Buffer; dissolved 300 km buffers around African cities

Analysis. A tool gallery, the Tools pane and a run history, guided workflows, ModelBuilder, and 1,000+ GeoLibre and Whitebox tools.

 A shaded-relief elevation model of the Sierra Nevada with the Style tab open

Rasters. GeoTIFF and COG of any pixel type, reprojected on the fly, with stretch, RGB, classified and shaded-relief symbology.
The World Atlas drawn on a 3D globe with the View tab open

Globe and projections. A 3D globe, Equal Earth, Robinson, polar and regional presets, or any EPSG code.

 An OpenFreeMap vector style over Paris, with the Basemap gallery listing the built-in basemaps and the web tile layer

Web basemaps. XYZ, TMS and WMS tiles, Mapbox Vector Tiles and MapLibre styles, on the flat map and the globe.
A landscape A4 page layout with a map frame, title, legend, north arrow and scale bar, and the Publish tab open

Layouts. Map frames, legends, scale bars, grids, map series and PDF export, plus reports and presentations.

 The Plugin Manager browsing the plugin registry, listing Basemaps, Hello RustGIS, Map Explorer and Vector Toolkit with their permissions

Plugins. Browse and install sandboxed plugins from plugins.rustgis.app, each showing the permissions it asks for.
RustGIS in dark mode with the View tab open over a map of Europe on the Midnight basemap

Dark mode and the View tab: effects, scene settings, panes and linked views.

 The Project backstage with cards to start a blank map, the World Atlas sample, or open a project

Projects. Start blank, from the World Atlas sample, or open a .rgis project.

Every screenshot is RustGIS itself, rendered offscreen by cargo run -p rustgis-ui-egui --example ui_shot.

Features

Area Highlights
Data GeoJSON, CSV/TSV with x/y columns in any coordinate system or WKT geometry, Excel and OpenDocument spreadsheets, GeoRSS, LandXML, encoded polylines, Shapefile (zipped too, in the browser as well), GeoPackage, GeoParquet, FlatGeobuf, KML/KMZ (with styles), GPX, GML, MapInfo MIF/MID, OpenStreetMap PBF, TopoJSON, AutoCAD DXF, LiDAR point clouds (LAS, LAZ, COPC) and geotagged photos in (large files read in place), files by their web address, every vector format GDAL reads when it is installed, and SQL queries and DuckDB databases through DuckDB Spatial when DuckDB is; PMTiles archives (web or file) and MBTiles files; GeoJSON, CSV, GeoPackage, GeoParquet, Shapefile, FlatGeobuf, KML/KMZ, GPX and WKT out; standalone tables; layer and map files, styles, templates and packages
Rasters GeoTIFF and cloud-optimised GeoTIFF (any pixel type, tiled or striped, compressed), ASCII grids, Zarr 2 and 3 stores (a variable at a time step, by folder or web address); reprojection from any EPSG code; Stretch, RGB, Classify, Unique Values, Colormap and Shaded Relief; DRA, band combinations, brightness/contrast/gamma; raster functions, indices, change detection, classification, georeferencing
Maps Multiple maps per project; a 3D globe; Web Mercator or any projection (Equal Earth, Robinson, Winkel Tripel, polar and regional presets, or an EPSG code); bookmarks, extent history, Go To XY; five offline basemaps
Web services WMS, WMTS, WFS, OGC API Features and ArcGIS REST (FeatureServer, MapServer, ImageServer, VectorTileServer) from their capabilities
Web tiles XYZ/TMS/WMS raster tiles, Mapbox Vector Tiles and MapLibre styles (sprites, patterns, expressions), cached and fetched in the background
Cartography Single symbol, unique values, graduated colours, proportional symbols; collision-free labels with placement, scale ranges and annotation; masking, display filters, aggregation bins, 2.5D extrusion; graphics and dynamic text
Editing Create, move, rotate, scale, merge, split and explode features; snapping, templates, elevation, traverse, topology rules; domains, subtypes, attribute rules, relationships, archiving; undo for everything
Analysis Selection by attributes (SQL) and location; Buffer, Clip, Erase, Dissolve, Summarize Within, Summary Statistics and more; viewshed, line of sight, IDW, shortest path, suitability modelling; ModelBuilder and scripts; 1,000+ GeoLibre and Whitebox raster, vector, LiDAR, hydrology and terrain tools
Imagery Ortho and reality mapping, pixel classification (k-means, minimum distance, a trainable neural network), mensuration, hosted imagery tiles
Layouts and reports Page layouts with map frames, legends, scale bars, grids and map series; reports with groups, statistics, charts and subreports; presentations (HTML slideshow, PDF); notebooks (Jupyter in and out)
Sharing PNG export at any DPI; PDF; web map pages, OGC API Features collections, MapLibre styles, glTF scenes, locators; project, map and mobile map packages; offline areas with sync
AI Assistant Ask about your data or tell the map what to do in plain language, with Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, OpenRouter, Ollama or any OpenAI-compatible model; also rustgis-cli ask, and an MCP server (rustgis-cli mcp) for Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code and other agents
Plugins Sandboxed WebAssembly plugins add commands, tools and ribbon tabs; install them from plugins.rustgis.app on the desktop, command line and web
Interface Command search (Ctrl+K), keyboard shortcuts, dark mode, a customizable ribbon and Quick Access Toolbar, linked side-by-side maps, 16 languages

The user guide covers each area in detail, Comparison sets RustGIS beside GeoLibre, QGIS and ArcGIS, and ROADMAP.md lists what's next.

Get RustGIS

Quick start

cargo run --release -p rustgis                       # the desktop app with the World Atlas sample
cargo run --release -p rustgis -- data.geojson       # open data (or a .rgis project)

Command line: every ribbon action is a command with an id.

rustgis-cli commands                                 # all command ids and parameters
rustgis-cli render countries.geojson map.png --basemap ocean
rustgis-cli run --sample \
  --cmd 'gp.run={"tool":"countPoints","params":{"polygons":"Countries","points":"Cities"}}' \
  --cmd 'layer.symbology={"layer":"Countries_Summarize","type":"graduated","field":"point_count"}' \
  --cmd 'share.exportMap={"path":"out.png","dpi":192}' --save atlas.rgis
rustgis-cli ask --sample "Which 5 countries have the largest GDP?"
claude mcp add rustgis -- rustgis-cli mcp --sample   # RustGIS as an MCP server for AI agents

See Command Line for more.

Python: the same engine and commands in-process (pip install rustgis), and the app itself in a Jupyter notebook.

import rustgis
s = rustgis.Session(sample=True)
s.run("gp.run", tool="buffer", params={"input": "Cities", "distance": 100})
s.to_png("map.png")
gdf = s.layer("Cities_Buffer").to_geopandas()

See Python and the getting-started notebook (open in Colab).

Architecture

Layered crates, each depending only on the ones below it:

Layer Crate Job
L0 rustgis-geom coordinates, extents, Web Mercator, geodesic distance/area, scale
L1 rustgis-data features and typed attributes; GeoJSON, CSV, Shapefile; GeoPackage, GeoParquet and FlatGeobuf providers; SQL where clauses; rasters and their coordinate systems
L2 rustgis-map, rustgis-analysis layers, symbology, labeling, camera, basemaps; geoprocessing (on geo)
L2 rustgis-tiles web map tiles: XYZ/TMS/WMS, Mapbox Vector Tiles, MapLibre styles, the tile cache
L3 rustgis-render tiny-skia renderer, label placement, PNG export, fonts
L3 rustgis-plugins sandboxed WebAssembly plugins and the plugin registry
L3 rustgis-geolibre the GeoLibre tool suite as geoprocessing tools
L4 rustgis-engine session, undo, command registry, sample project
L5 rustgis-assistant the AI Assistant: a chat agent that acts through commands
L6 rustgis-ui-egui the ribbon front end (swappable)
apps rustgis, rustgis-cli, rustgis-web desktop, command line, browser (WebAssembly)

cargo xtask ci runs formatting, clippy, the tests and the layering check. Contributor and agent notes: AGENTS.md.

Sponsor

RustGIS is free and open source, and stays that way. If it is useful to you or your team, sponsorship is the most direct way to keep development, hosting and cross-platform distribution going.

See the Become a Sponsor page for what sponsorship supports and for other, free ways to help.

License and credits

Licensed under the Apache License 2.0. Sample data from Natural Earth (public domain).

RustGIS (opengeos/RustGIS)

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1.3K ·GitHub
RustGIS
What is this?RustGIS is a free, open-source GIS application written entirely in Rust for mapping, analyzing and sharing geospatial data.
Is this a single app or a bunch of libraries?It is one native, GPU-drawn desktop program (no runtime or server needed), built from layered Rust crates, and also ships as a CLI and a WebAssembly build that runs in the browser.
How do I get RustGIS running?Open web.rustgis.app for the browser version with nothing to install, download desktop builds from downloads.rustgis.app or GitHub releases, install via winget/brew/yay/dnf copr, or build from source with 'cargo run --release -p rustgis' (needs Rust 1.90+).
Do I need an API key for the AI Assistant?Only if you want the AI Assistant, which can use Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, OpenRouter, any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, or a local Ollama model, so you bring your own key or run it offline with Ollama; the rest of the app needs nothing extra.
Does it support every GIS file format out of the box?Most vector/raster formats are handled natively, but reading every GDAL-supported vector format or running SQL over DuckDB databases requires GDAL or DuckDB to be installed separately on your machine.
Which platforms does it run on?RustGIS runs natively on Windows, macOS and Linux, and the same engine is compiled to WebAssembly for use directly in a browser at web.rustgis.app.
What are the GeoLibre and Whitebox tools?They are two bundled toolsets that give RustGIS over 1,000 geoprocessing tools for terrain, hydrology, LiDAR and remote-sensing analysis.
Can I script RustGIS instead of clicking buttons?Yes, every ribbon action is a command with an id, which you can run from rustgis-cli, chain in notebooks or ModelBuilder, or have the AI Assistant execute for you.
Can I use RustGIS from Python?Yes, 'pip install rustgis' gives the same engine and commands in-process, and the app itself can run inside a Jupyter notebook.
How does RustGIS compare to QGIS or ArcGIS?The README's Comparison doc positions RustGIS alongside GeoLibre, QGIS and ArcGIS, aiming to match their analysis and cartography feature set while staying a single native binary with no runtime or server to manage.
What are similar projects?OpenCADStudio, ruflo, vectorcraft, openpencil, goose, qwen-code, soundcraft, evenfire
Which topics is it in?point-cloud, gis, rust-lang, geospatial, jupyter-notebook, plugin-system, wasm, ollama, gemini, mcp-server, plugin, desktop
Creator
opengeos
Size
3.3 MB
Stars
1.3K
Updated
CommitOct 17Releasev0.3.0Oct 16
Age
7d
Commits · 90 Days