librsvg, (occasionally stylized as LibRsvg)[2] is a free software SVG rendering library written as part of the GNOME project, intended to be lightweight and portable.[3] The Linux command-line program rsvg-convert uses the library to turn SVG files into raster images.
 | |
| Original author(s) | Raph Levien |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | GNOME Project |
| Stable release | 2.58.0[1]  / 17 March 2024 |
| Repository | |
| Written in | C, Rust |
| Type | Graphics library |
| License | GPLv2, LGPLv2 |
| Website | wiki |
Backends
librsvg uses two other libraries to perform tasks from reading the file to rendering to the screen:
Adoption
librsvg is developed for the GNOME desktop environment and as such is used by GNOME Files and GNOME Loupe but is also intended to be used in other software applications. As a notable example, wikis hosted by Wikimedia use librsvg to render SVG images.[6] It was once picked for these web applications because it was decidedly "fast but not very accurate", according to MediaWiki.[7] As of May 2023[update], Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons use a version of librsvg 2.44 to render SVG as PNG.[8][9]
Upon switching to the cairo vector rendering engine in 2005,[10][11] librsvg became more accurate and more visually pleasing. Since 2012 an independent developer published Win32 console ports rsvg-convert.exe, as of December 2017[update] version 2.40.20.[12] The rsvg-view manual page is also available online.[13]
Version history
| Version | Date | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| 1.0.0 | 2001-05-08 | |
| 1.1.6 | 2002-03-07 | |
| 2.0.0 | 2002-06-19 | |
| 2.1.0 | 2002-09-27 | |
| 2.2.0 | 2003-01-20 | |
| 2.3.0 | 2003-04-08 | |
| 2.4.0 | 2003-09-08 | |
| 2.5.0 | 2003-12-07 | |
| 2.6.0 | 2004-03-08 | |
| 2.7.0 | 2004-03-10 | |
| 2.8.0 | 2004-09-03 | |
| 2.9.0 | 2005-01-25 | |
| 2.11.0 | 2005-08-25 | |
| 2.12.0 | 2005-09-15 | |
| 2.13.0 | 2005-10-21 | |
| 2.14.0 | 2006-02-25 | |
| 2.15.0 | 2006-05-11 | |
| 2.16.0 | 2006-08-31 | |
| 2.18.0 | 2007-07-24 | |
| 2.20.0 | 2008-01-19 | |
| 2.22.0 | 2008-02-21 | |
| 2.26.0 | 2009-03-16 | |
| 2.31.0 | 2010-07-02 | |
| 2.32.0 | 2010-09-27 | |
| 2.34.0 | 2011-04-03 | |
| 2.35.0 | 2011-11-14 | |
| 2.36.0 | 2012-03-26 | |
| 2.37.0 | 2013-01-10 | |
| 2.39.0 | 2013-08-16 | |
| 2.40.0 | 2013-10-14 | |
| 2.40.16 | 2016-06-09 | |
| 2.40.17 | 2017-04-07 | |
| 2.40.20 | 2017-12-16 | |
| 2.40.21 | 2020-02-26 | 2.40.21: Last version without Rust |
| 2.41.0 | 2017-01-04 | |
| 2.42.0 | 2018-01-09 | |
| 2.43.0 | 2018-06-12 | |
| 2.44.0 | 2018-08-23 | |
| 2.44.10 | 2018-12-11 | 2.44.10: version used on Wikimedia Commons as of May 2023[14] |
| 2.45.0 | 2018-11-17 | |
| 2.45.6 | 2019-05-14 | 2:45.6: First version only on Rust.[clarification needed] Requires Cairo 1.16.0 or later and Rust 1.30.0 or later[15] |
| 2.45.92 | 2019-09-02 | |
| 2.46.0 | 2019-09-09 | |
| 2.47.0 | 2019-10-29 | |
| 2.48.0 | 2020-03-07 | |
| 2.48.9 | 2020-11-05 | |
| 2.49.0 | 2020-05-29 | |
| 2.49.5 | 2020-09-04 | |
| 2.50.0 | 2020-09-10 | |
| 2.50.3 | 2021-01-28 | |
| 2.51.0 | 2021-02-03 | |
| 2.51.4 | 2021-07-09 | |
| 2.52.0 | 2021-09-15 | |
| 2.53.0 | 2022-01-18 | |
| 2.53.1 | 2022-02-12 | |
| 2.53.2 | 2022-03-12 | |
| 2.54.0 | 2022-03-16 | 2.54.1 2022-04-23; 2.54.2 2022-05-13; 2.54.3 2022-05-14; 2.54.4 2022-06-10; 2.54.5 2022-08-26 |
| 2.55.0 | 2022-08-03 | |
| 2.55.1 | 2022-09-05 | |
| 2.55.2 | 2023-03-16 | |
| 2.57.90 | 2024-01-25 | Latest version as of 2024-01-25 First version to use Rust crates for all image loading operations, eliminating gdk-pixbuf dependency.[16] |
Usage
On Linux with the librsvg2-bin package installed,[17] an SVG file can be converted to PNG as follows:
$ rsvg-convert --format=png --output=diagram.png diagram.svgOther supported output formats include PDF, XML, and valid SVG.
