skia-rs

A 100% Rust implementation of the Skia 2D graphics library

Getting Started • Features • Examples • Documentation • Contributing

Overview

skia-rs is a pure Rust reimplementation of Google's Skia 2D graphics library. It aims to provide complete API compatibility with the original Skia while leveraging Rust's safety, performance, and ergonomics.

Why skia-rs?

• Pure Rust — No C/C++ dependencies, easy to build and deploy
• Memory Safe — Leverage Rust's ownership system, no use-after-free or buffer overflows
• Fast — Optimized software rasterizer, competitive with native Skia
• Portable — Works anywhere Rust compiles: desktop, mobile, WASM
• API Compatible — Familiar API for Skia users, smooth migration path

Getting Started

Add skia-rs-safe to your Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
skia-rs-safe = "0.1"

Or use individual crates for more control:

[dependencies]
skia-rs-core = "0.1"    # Core types: Point, Rect, Matrix, Color
skia-rs-path = "0.1"    # Path geometry and operations
skia-rs-paint = "0.1"   # Paint, shaders, filters
skia-rs-canvas = "0.1"  # Canvas and surface

Quick Example

use skia_rs_canvas::Surface;
use skia_rs_core::{Color, Rect};
use skia_rs_paint::{Paint, Style};

fn main() {
    // Create a 800x600 RGBA surface
    let mut surface = Surface::new_raster_n32_premul(800, 600)
        .expect("Failed to create surface");

    // Get a canvas to draw on
    let canvas = surface.canvas();

    // Clear with a dark background
    canvas.clear(Color::from_rgb(18, 18, 26));

    // Create a paint with an orange color
    let mut paint = Paint::new();
    paint.set_anti_alias(true);
    paint.set_color(Color::from_rgb(255, 107, 53));
    paint.set_style(Style::Fill);

    // Draw a rounded rectangle
    let rect = Rect::from_xywh(100.0, 100.0, 600.0, 400.0);
    canvas.draw_round_rect(&rect, 20.0, 20.0, &paint);

    // Draw some text
    paint.set_color(Color::WHITE);
    canvas.draw_string("Hello, skia-rs!", 150.0, 320.0, &paint);
}

Features

Core Graphics

• ✅ Geometry primitives — Point, Rect, RRect, Matrix, Matrix44
• ✅ Color management — Color, Color4f, ColorSpace, ICC profiles
• ✅ Path system — Path construction, boolean operations, effects
• ✅ Paint & styling — Stroke, fill, blend modes, shaders

Drawing Operations

• ✅ Canvas API — Full drawing operations with save/restore
• ✅ Anti-aliased rendering — High-quality edges
• ✅ Clipping — Rect and path-based clipping
• ✅ Transformations — Translate, rotate, scale, skew

Text

• ✅ Text shaping — via rustybuzz
• ✅ Font management — TrueType/OpenType support
• ✅ Rich text layout — Paragraph styling, decorations

Image Codecs

• ✅ PNG — Read/write support
• ✅ JPEG — Read/write support
• ✅ GIF — Read/write support
• ✅ WebP — Read/write support

Effects

• ✅ Shaders — Linear, radial, sweep gradients, image shaders
• ✅ Color filters — Matrix, lighting, blend mode filters
• ✅ Mask filters — Blur, shader-based masks
• ✅ Image filters — Blur, drop shadow, morphology, displacement

GPU Backends

• 🔄 wgpu — Cross-platform GPU rendering (in progress)
• 📋 Vulkan — Planned
• 📋 OpenGL — Planned
• 📋 Metal — Planned

Crate Structure

skia-rs/
├── skia-rs-core     # Foundation: types, geometry, color
├── skia-rs-path     # Path geometry and operations
├── skia-rs-paint    # Paint, shaders, effects
├── skia-rs-canvas   # Canvas, surface, recording
├── skia-rs-text     # Text layout and rendering
├── skia-rs-codec    # Image encoding/decoding
├── skia-rs-gpu      # GPU backends
├── skia-rs-svg      # SVG parsing and rendering
├── skia-rs-pdf      # PDF generation
├── skia-rs-ffi      # C FFI bindings
└── skia-rs-safe     # High-level unified API

Feature Flags

The skia-rs-safe crate supports feature flags:

# All features
skia-rs-safe = { version = "0.1", features = ["codec", "svg", "pdf", "gpu"] }

# Minimal (no codecs or extras)
skia-rs-safe = { version = "0.1", default-features = false }

Performance

skia-rs includes a comprehensive benchmark suite. Key performance highlights:

Run benchmarks locally:

cargo bench -p skia-rs-bench

Examples

Drawing Shapes

use skia_rs_canvas::Surface;
use skia_rs_core::{Color, Rect, Point};
use skia_rs_paint::{Paint, Style};
use skia_rs_path::PathBuilder;

fn main() -> Result<(), Box<dyn std::error::Error>> {
    let mut surface = Surface::new_raster_n32_premul(400, 400)?;
    let canvas = surface.canvas();
    canvas.clear(Color::WHITE);

    // Draw a circle
    let mut paint = Paint::new();
    paint.set_color(Color::from_rgb(66, 133, 244));
    paint.set_anti_alias(true);
    canvas.draw_circle(Point::new(200.0, 200.0), 80.0, &paint);

    // Draw a custom path
    let path = PathBuilder::new()
        .move_to(100.0, 300.0)
        .quad_to(200.0, 250.0, 300.0, 300.0)
        .build();

    paint.set_color(Color::from_rgb(234, 67, 53));
    paint.set_style(Style::Stroke);
    paint.set_stroke_width(4.0);
    canvas.draw_path(&path, &paint);

    Ok(())
}

Gradients

use skia_rs_paint::{Paint, LinearGradient, TileMode};
use skia_rs_core::{Point, Color4f};

let gradient = LinearGradient::new(
    Point::new(0.0, 0.0),
    Point::new(400.0, 0.0),
    &[Color4f::RED, Color4f::BLUE],
    None,
    TileMode::Clamp,
);

let mut paint = Paint::new();
paint.set_shader(gradient);
canvas.draw_rect(&rect, &paint);

Image I/O

use skia_rs_codec::{Image, ImageFormat};

// Load an image
let image = Image::from_file("input.png")?;

// Draw it
canvas.draw_image(&image, 0.0, 0.0, None);

// Save to file
surface.save_png("output.png")?;

C FFI

skia-rs provides C bindings for use from other languages:

#include "skia-rs.h"

sk_surface_t* surface = sk_surface_new_raster_n32_premul(800, 600);
sk_canvas_t* canvas = sk_surface_get_canvas(surface);

sk_paint_t* paint = sk_paint_new();
sk_paint_set_color(paint, 0xFFFF6B35);
sk_paint_set_antialias(paint, true);

sk_rect_t rect = { 100, 100, 700, 500 };
sk_canvas_draw_rect(canvas, &rect, paint);

sk_paint_delete(paint);
sk_surface_delete(surface);

Build the FFI library:

cargo build -p skia-rs-ffi --release

Contributing

We welcome contributions! Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.

Development

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/pegasusheavy/skia-rs.git
cd skia-rs

# Build all crates
cargo build --workspace

# Run tests
cargo test --workspace

# Run benchmarks
cargo bench -p skia-rs-bench

# Run fuzzing (requires nightly)
cd fuzz && cargo +nightly fuzz run fuzz_path

Roadmap

See TODO.md for the complete development roadmap.

v0.1.0 (Current):

• Core types and geometry ✅
• Path system with boolean operations ✅
• Full paint/shader/filter stack ✅
• Software rasterizer with AA ✅
• Text shaping ✅
• Image codecs (PNG, JPEG, GIF, WebP) ✅
• C FFI bindings ✅

v0.2.0 (Planned):

• GPU rendering via wgpu
• SVG export
• Performance optimizations
• Extended font support

License

Licensed under either of:

• Apache License, Version 2.0
• MIT License

at your option.

Acknowledgments

• Google Skia — The original inspiration
• rustybuzz — Text shaping
• wgpu — Cross-platform GPU abstraction