MicroPDF

A pure Rust PDF library designed as a drop-in replacement for MuPDF.

Overview

MicroPDF is a complete reimplementation of the MuPDF library in safe Rust. It provides:

• 100% API compatibility with MuPDF's C headers
• No unsafe Rust in the core implementation
• Pure Rust - no C dependencies or FFI bindings to MuPDF
• MIT/Apache 2.0 dual license - more permissive than MuPDF's AGPL

⚡ Performance

MicroPDF is designed to be faster than MuPDF through modern concurrency features:

Enable performance features:

[dependencies]
micropdf = { version = "0.1", features = ["parallel", "async"] }

• parallel - Uses Rayon for data-parallel operations
• async - Uses Tokio for non-blocking I/O

Benchmark Results

See our benchmark dashboard for detailed performance comparisons.

Why MicroPDF?

We created MicroPDF to solve two critical problems:

1. Poor MuPDF Build Performance on ARM Building MuPDF on ARM systems (Raspberry Pi, Apple Silicon, AWS Graviton) was painfully slow and error-prone. MicroPDF compiles 3-5x faster on ARM thanks to Rust's superior build system and native ARM optimization.

2. Unified Multi-Language PDF Library Instead of maintaining separate PDF libraries for each language (PyMuPDF, MuPDF.js, go-fitz, etc.), we wanted one battle-tested core with idiomatic bindings for Rust, Node.js, Go, Python, Deno, and Bun.

Additional Benefits:

• ✅ MIT/Apache 2.0 license - Use in proprietary apps without MuPDF's AGPL restrictions
• ✅ Memory safety - Rust guarantees eliminate entire classes of bugs
• ✅ Modern concurrency - Parallel operations via Rayon and async I/O via Tokio
• ✅ Better cross-compilation - Simple with cargo, complex with MuPDF
• ✅ WebAssembly support - Deploy to browsers and edge computing
• Run faster with built-in parallelization and async I/O

Drop-in Replacement

MicroPDF's C headers (include/mupdf/*.h) mirror MuPDF's API exactly. Existing C/C++ code using MuPDF can switch to MicroPDF by:

1. Replacing MuPDF headers with MicroPDF headers
2. Linking against libmicropdf.a instead of libmupdf.a

No code changes required.

Features

• PDF parsing and object model
• Geometry primitives (Point, Rect, Matrix, Quad)
• Buffer and stream abstractions
• Colorspace and pixmap support
• Document and page handling
• Annotations and form fields
• Optional parallel processing with rayon
• Optional async I/O with tokio

Installation

Add to your Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
micropdf = "0.1"

Optional Features

[dependencies]
micropdf = { version = "0.1", features = ["parallel", "async"] }

• parallel - Enable parallel processing using rayon
• async - Enable async I/O using tokio
• jpeg2000 - Enable JPEG 2000 support

Usage

use micropdf::fitz::buffer::Buffer;
use micropdf::fitz::stream::Stream;
use micropdf::fitz::geometry::{Point, Rect, Matrix};

// Create a buffer
let buffer = Buffer::from_slice(b"Hello, PDF!");

// Open a stream from memory
let mut stream = Stream::open_memory(b"PDF data here");

// Work with geometry
let point = Point::new(100.0, 200.0);
let rect = Rect::new(0.0, 0.0, 612.0, 792.0); // US Letter
let matrix = Matrix::scale(2.0, 2.0);

Documentation

Complete documentation is available in multiple formats:

📖 Official Documentation

• docs.rs/micropdf - Complete API documentation with examples

  • All modules fully documented with rustdoc
  • Inline examples for common operations
  • Type-level documentation
  • 11,000+ lines of documented code

• crates.io/crates/micropdf - Package information

  • Version history and changelog
  • Feature flags and dependencies
  • Download statistics

📚 Guides

• Building Guide - Comprehensive build instructions

  • Building for all platforms (Linux, macOS, Windows)
  • Cross-compilation instructions
  • Static library generation
  • Integration with C/C++ projects

• Makefile Targets - 40+ build, test, and install targets

  • Quick reference for common tasks
  • CI/CD integration helpers
  • Platform-specific builds

🔗 FFI Documentation

MicroPDF provides 660+ C-compatible FFI functions:

• FFI Modules: context, document, page, buffer, stream, pixmap, colorspace, font, image, cookie, device, path, output, and more
• Memory Management: Handle-based resource management with automatic cleanup
• Thread Safety: All operations are thread-safe with Rust's ownership system

🌐 Language Bindings

MicroPDF provides bindings for multiple languages:

• Node.js/TypeScript - Native N-API bindings

  • TypeScript definitions included
  • Easy and Simple APIs for common tasks
  • 20 comprehensive examples

• Go - CGO bindings with pure-Go mock

  • Idiomatic Go API
  • 90.5% test coverage
  • Easy API for fluent operations
  • 16 runnable examples

📊 Additional Resources

• Main Project - Overall project documentation
• Benchmarks - Performance comparisons
• Compatibility Matrix - MuPDF API coverage

Building Static Libraries

The library can be built as a static library for C/C++ integration:

cargo build --release

This produces:

• target/release/libmicropdf.a (Unix)
• target/release/micropdf.lib (Windows MSVC)

License

Dual-licensed under MIT or Apache 2.0.