cudf-sys

Native build crate for linking against NVIDIA's libcudf.

This crate contains no Rust code — it exists solely to locate and link libcudf.so via its build script. Downstream crates (cudf-cxx, cudf) depend on this to inherit correct linker flags.

Prerequisites

libcudf must be installed on your system. Supported discovery methods (in priority order):

1. CUDF_ROOT environment variable

export CUDF_ROOT=/path/to/libcudf/prefix
# expects: $CUDF_ROOT/lib/libcudf.so and $CUDF_ROOT/include/cudf/

2. Conda (recommended)

conda install -c rapidsai -c conda-forge libcudf cuda-version=12.2
# CONDA_PREFIX is automatically set when the environment is active

3. pkg-config

If libcudf installs a .pc file, pkg-config will find it automatically.

CUDA Runtime

The CUDA runtime (libcudart.so) is also required. Set CUDA_PATH if it's not in a standard location:

export CUDA_PATH=/usr/local/cuda

System Requirements

• CUDA 12.2+
• GPU: NVIDIA Volta (compute capability 7.0) or newer
• Linux (libcudf does not support macOS or Windows)