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Installation

From PyPI

uv add silicate

Or as a standalone script dependency:

uv run --with silicate python my_script.py

Pre-built wheels

Pre-built wheels are available for:

  • macOS (arm64, x86_64)
  • Linux (x86_64, aarch64)
  • Windows (x86_64)

If a wheel isn't available for your platform, uv will build from source (requires a Rust toolchain).

From source

Building from source requires:

  • Rust toolchain (1.70+) — install via rustup
  • Python (3.9+)
  • System fonts — the default font is Hack (bundled), but custom fonts require system font libraries
# Clone with submodules (Silicon is vendored as a git submodule)
git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/alltuner/silicate.git
cd silicate

# Install
uv sync

Development setup

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/alltuner/silicate.git
cd silicate

# Create venv and build in development mode
uv venv
VIRTUAL_ENV=.venv uvx maturin develop

# Verify
uv run python -c "import silicate; print(silicate.list_themes())"

Faster iteration

During development, maturin develop compiles in debug mode by default (faster builds, slower runtime). Add --release for optimized builds:

VIRTUAL_ENV=.venv uvx maturin develop --release

System dependencies

macOS

No extra dependencies needed — font rendering uses CoreText (built-in).

Linux

You may need fontconfig and freetype development libraries:

sudo apt-get install pkg-config libfontconfig1-dev libfreetype-dev

sudo dnf install fontconfig-devel freetype-devel

sudo pacman -S fontconfig freetype2

Windows

No extra dependencies needed — font rendering uses DirectWrite (built-in).