Build Python Bindings

We use Maturin for Python bindings, and provide an example of installation using the uv package manager for Python below.

In order to enable plotting with MayaVi only Python 3.10.* is currently supported,

1. Begin by installing Maturin (and pip) in a new virtual environment.

uv venv --python=3.10 && source .venv/bin/activate && uv pip install maturin pip

2. Use the Maturin CLI to install the Python bindings into this virtual environment.

Note that Maturin must be run from the kifmm crate root, not the workspace root.

# Building bindings in release mode, enable Python binding
cd /path/to/kifmm/crate && maturin develop --release --features python

We provide example usage of the Python API, as well as visualisation, in the python/examples directory.

Note

You must deactivate your virtual environment before building/testing the Rust library with cargo commands as maturin wraps Cargo, and on MacOS and certain other platforms leads to linker errors.