Install kim-api with Homebrew, zypper, apt

Project links

• Homepage

Commands and aliases

• kim-api-activate
• kim-api-collections-management
• kim-api-deactivate

Project history

The project grew out of OpenKIM's goal of making interatomic potentials portable, testable, and citable instead of being locked inside one simulator's input format or source tree. The API documentation describes KIM API as the formal specification and implementation layer that lets one Portable Model be used without modification by multiple simulators.

The 2.x line was a major modernization. OpenKIM's revision history records kim-api-v2-2.0.0 on 2019-02-06, followed by the transition back to the plain kim-api package name in 2.0.2 on 2019-03-28. Later releases added performance improvements, collection-management refinements, Windows support, relocatable installs, and CMake changes for KIM API items.

Adoption history

OpenKIM documents KIM API support across major atomistic simulation tools and workflows, including LAMMPS, ASE, GULP, DL_POLY, ASAP, KLIFF, and related materials-science software. That ecosystem role matters more than raw command-line popularity: KIM API is glue that lets potentials travel between simulators.

The package-manager metadata for this batch lists Homebrew, Debian, Ubuntu, and openSUSE packages. That packaging footprint fits its role as a shared scientific library rather than a single end-user application.

How it is used

Users install KIM API so simulators can load KIM Portable Models, Simulator Models, and model drivers from OpenKIM collections. The bundled command-line utilities such as kim-api-collections-management manage model collections, while the library and headers are consumed by simulator builds and model packages.

KIM API is mostly invisible in day-to-day simulations once installed correctly: researchers interact with simulator-specific commands, but the API standardizes the boundary where the simulator asks an interatomic model for energies, forces, neighbor lists, species, units, and metadata.

Why package nerds care

For package nerds, kim-api is a good example of a domain-specific ABI/API standard that package managers have to treat like shared infrastructure. It is not just another numerical library; its versioning affects separately packaged models, simulator integrations, CMake metadata, and scientific reproducibility.

It also shows why scientific package histories often matter: a KIM-compatible model can be cited and reused across codes only if the library, model collections, and simulator support remain installable together.

Timeline

• 2017: KIM API 1.9.0 added the collections-management utility for installing and removing KIM models.
• 2019: kim-api-v2-2.0.0 was released on 2019-02-06.
• 2019: LAMMPS gained full KIM API v2 support as of 2019-02-28 according to OpenKIM's software-using-KIM page.
• 2020: KIM API 2.2.0 added Windows support and relocatable installs.
• 2026: KIM API 2.4.2 was released on 2026-03-06.

Related projects

• OpenKIM is the repository and curation project around the API.
• LAMMPS, ASE, GULP, DL_POLY, ASAP, and KLIFF are notable software projects documented by OpenKIM as using KIM API or KIM models.
• KIM Portable Models, Model Drivers, and Simulator Models are the package types that the API is designed to make portable.

Sources

• https://github.com/openkim/kim-api
• https://kim-api.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
• https://openkim.org/kim-api/kim-api-revision-history/
• https://openkim.org/kim-api/previous-versions/
• https://openkim.org/projects-using-kim/