Show HN: OxiGDAL – A pure Rust replacement for GDAL with zero C/C++ dependencies
kitasan Tuesday, March 10, 2026
Hey HN! We're releasing OxiGDAL v0.1.0, a production-grade geospatial data abstraction library written in 100% pure Rust -- no C/C++/Fortran toolchain required. If you've ever fought with gdal-sys linking errors, bloated Docker images just to read a GeoTIFF, or GDAL's data-race bugs in multithreaded code, this is for you.
What it covers: - 11 format drivers (GeoTIFF/COG, GeoJSON, GeoParquet, Zarr, FlatGeobuf, Shapefile, NetCDF, HDF5, GRIB, JPEG2000, VRT) - Full CRS transformations (pure Rust PROJ with 1000+ EPSG codes) - SIMD-accelerated raster/vector algorithms (AVX2, AVX-512, NEON auto-detected) - Cloud-native I/O (HTTP range reads for COGs, async throughout) - Cross-platform bindings: Python (numpy/arrow-native), Node.js, WASM, iOS, Android - ~500K SLoC across 68 workspace crates
Just cargo add oxigdal -- no system libs, no pkg-config, no cmake. Compiles to a single static binary. Works in WASM and Lambda out of the box. GitHub: https://github.com/cool-japan/oxigdal We'd love feedback from the geo community. Happy to answer any questions!