brew / rank 2466

Install pcl with Homebrew, apk, dnf, Nix, apt

Library for 2D/3D image and point cloud processing. Version 1.15.1 via Homebrew; verified 2026-10-30. Also installable with debian: sudo apt install libpcl-apps1.15.

Install command Security notes

install

Additional install commands

macOS

Homebrewverified · 100%

brew install pcl

local Homebrew formula metadata

Linux

Alpine Linux apkverified · 92%

sudo apk add pcl

Alpine Linux edge package indexes · pcl · source: dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org

Fedora dnfverified · 92%

sudo dnf install pcl

Fedora Rawhide package metadata · pcl · source: dl.fedoraproject.org

Nixverified · 92%

nix profile install nixpkgs#pcl

nixpkgs package indexes · pkgs/by-name/pc/pcl/package.nix · source: api.github.com

Debian aptverified · 92%

sudo apt install libpcl-apps1.15

Debian stable package indexes · libpcl-apps1.15 · source: deb.debian.org

Ubuntu aptverified · 92%

sudo apt install libpcl-apps1.14

Ubuntu 24.04 LTS package indexes · libpcl-apps1.14 · source: archive.ubuntu.com

overview

Package summary

Library for 2D/3D image and point cloud processing

Project links

Commands and aliases

pcl_add_gaussian_noise
pcl_bilateral_upsampling
pcl_boundary_estimation
pcl_cloud_composer
pcl_cluster_extraction
pcl_compute_cloud_error
pcl_compute_hausdorff
pcl_compute_hull
pcl_concatenate_points_pcd
pcl_convert_pcd_ascii_binary
pcl_converter
pcl_convolve
pcl_crf_segmentation
pcl_crop_to_hull
pcl_demean_cloud
pcl_dinast_grabber
pcl_elch
pcl_extract_feature
pcl_face_trainer
pcl_fast_bilateral_filter
pcl_feature_matching
pcl_fpfh_estimation
pcl_fs_face_detector
pcl_generate
pcl_gp3_surface
pcl_grabcut_2d
pcl_grid_min
pcl_hdl_grabber
pcl_hdl_viewer_simple
pcl_icp
pcl_icp2d
pcl_linemod_detection

history

Project history and usage

The Point Cloud Library is a modular, cross-platform C++ framework and tool suite for acquiring, filtering, registering, segmenting, reconstructing, recognizing, and visualizing 2D/3D point-cloud data.

Project history

PCL began at Willow Garage around 2010 as a large-scale open library for 2D/3D image and point-cloud processing. Radu Bogdan Rusu and Steve Cousins presented the project at the 2011 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

Copyright notices in the official source record the transition from Willow Garage stewardship to Open Perception from 2012 onward. The project remains BSD-licensed and supported by commercial organizations, researchers, donors, and contributors.

Adoption history

PCL emerged alongside inexpensive 3D sensors and growing robotics demand for reusable perception algorithms. Its project paper describes an international community of robotics and perception researchers, and official project material identifies both commercial and research use.

The library became particularly visible in robotics workflows, while its cross-platform, modular design enabled deployment on Linux, macOS, Windows, Android, and size-constrained systems. Official tutorials also document package-manager installation through Homebrew.

How it is used

Applications link the required PCL modules rather than the entire framework, while bundled commands handle common conversion, filtering, registration, reconstruction, feature-extraction, and visualization tasks.

The official tutorials cover CMake integration, PCD input and output, sensor acquisition, filtering, registration, segmentation, surface reconstruction, recognition, and visualization.

PCL does not document a single persistent user configuration or credentials file; behavior is normally selected through library APIs, build options, or individual tool arguments.

Why package nerds care

PCL packages a broad 3D-perception stack—filters, registration, feature extraction, segmentation, reconstruction, recognition, visualization, and sensor input—behind reusable C++ libraries and a large collection of command-line tools.

Its modular libraries, substantial native dependency graph, optional acceleration and sensor backends, and many file-conversion utilities make PCL both unusually capable and unusually demanding to package consistently across platforms.

Timeline

2010: Early PCL source copyrights identify Willow Garage as the originating organization.
2011: Radu Bogdan Rusu and Steve Cousins presented PCL at ICRA.
2012: Official source copyrights begin identifying Open Perception stewardship.

Related projects

ROS developers are identified by the official project wiki as major PCL users.
OpenNI and several depth-camera and LiDAR interfaces feed sensor data into PCL workflows.
Eigen, Boost, FLANN, and VTK form important parts of PCL's numerical, search, portability, and visualization ecosystem.

Sources

security posture

Risk level: orange

infrastructure mutation or orchestration signal.

Risk classifier

orange risk · medium confidence · infrastructure

Why

infrastructure mutation or orchestration signal

Signals

text:cloud

Install behavior

No Homebrew post-install hook is recorded in formula metadata.
Homebrew bottle metadata is available for 7 platform targets.
Installs with 14 runtime dependencies.
Build metadata lists 2 build dependencies.

Recommended review

Before unattended agent use, check whether the tool reads plaintext credentials, writes remote state, publishes artifacts, or shells out to plugins.

executables

Installed executables

Command	Kind	Exposure
`pcl_add_gaussian_noise`	cli	global executable
`pcl_bilateral_upsampling`	cli	global executable
`pcl_boundary_estimation`	cli	global executable
`pcl_cloud_composer`	cli	global executable
`pcl_cluster_extraction`	cli	global executable
`pcl_compute_cloud_error`	cli	global executable
`pcl_compute_hausdorff`	cli	global executable
`pcl_compute_hull`	cli	global executable
`pcl_concatenate_points_pcd`	cli	global executable
`pcl_convert_pcd_ascii_binary`	cli	global executable
`pcl_converter`	cli	global executable
`pcl_convolve`	cli	global executable
`pcl_crf_segmentation`	cli	global executable
`pcl_crop_to_hull`	cli	global executable
`pcl_demean_cloud`	cli	global executable
`pcl_dinast_grabber`	cli	global executable
`pcl_elch`	cli	global executable
`pcl_extract_feature`	cli	global executable
`pcl_face_trainer`	cli	global executable
`pcl_fast_bilateral_filter`	cli	global executable
`pcl_feature_matching`	cli	global executable
`pcl_fpfh_estimation`	cli	global executable
`pcl_fs_face_detector`	cli	global executable
`pcl_generate`	cli	global executable
`pcl_gp3_surface`	cli	global executable
`pcl_grabcut_2d`	cli	global executable
`pcl_grid_min`	cli	global executable
`pcl_hdl_grabber`	cli	global executable
`pcl_hdl_viewer_simple`	cli	global executable
`pcl_icp`	cli	global executable
`pcl_icp2d`	cli	global executable
`pcl_linemod_detection`	cli	global executable
`pcl_local_max`	cli	global executable
`pcl_lum`	cli	global executable
`pcl_manual_registration`	cli	global executable
`pcl_marching_cubes_reconstruction`	cli	global executable
`pcl_match_linemod_template`	cli	global executable
`pcl_mesh2pcd`	cli	global executable
`pcl_mesh_sampling`	cli	global executable
`pcl_mls_smoothing`	cli	global executable
`pcl_morph`	cli	global executable
`pcl_multiscale_feature_persistence_example`	cli	global executable
`pcl_ndt2d`	cli	global executable
`pcl_ndt3d`	cli	global executable
`pcl_nn_classification_example`	cli	global executable
`pcl_normal_estimation`	cli	global executable
`pcl_obj2pcd`	cli	global executable
`pcl_obj2ply`	cli	global executable
`pcl_obj2vtk`	cli	global executable
`pcl_obj_rec_ransac_accepted_hypotheses`	cli	global executable
`pcl_obj_rec_ransac_hash_table`	cli	global executable
`pcl_obj_rec_ransac_model_opps`	cli	global executable
`pcl_obj_rec_ransac_orr_octree`	cli	global executable
`pcl_obj_rec_ransac_orr_octree_zprojection`	cli	global executable
`pcl_obj_rec_ransac_result`	cli	global executable
`pcl_obj_rec_ransac_scene_opps`	cli	global executable
`pcl_octree_viewer`	cli	global executable
`pcl_outlier_removal`	cli	global executable
`pcl_passthrough_filter`	cli	global executable
`pcl_pcd2ply`	cli	global executable
`pcl_pcd2png`	cli	global executable
`pcl_pcd2vtk`	cli	global executable
`pcl_pcd_change_viewpoint`	cli	global executable
`pcl_pcd_convert_NaN_nan`	cli	global executable
`pcl_pcd_image_viewer`	cli	global executable
`pcl_pcd_introduce_nan`	cli	global executable
`pcl_pcd_organized_edge_detection`	cli	global executable
`pcl_pcd_organized_multi_plane_segmentation`	cli	global executable
`pcl_pcd_select_object_plane`	cli	global executable
`pcl_pcd_video_player`	cli	global executable
`pcl_pclzf2pcd`	cli	global executable
`pcl_plane_projection`	cli	global executable
`pcl_ply2obj`	cli	global executable
`pcl_ply2pcd`	cli	global executable
`pcl_ply2ply`	cli	global executable
`pcl_ply2raw`	cli	global executable
`pcl_ply2vtk`	cli	global executable
`pcl_plyheader`	cli	global executable
`pcl_png2pcd`	cli	global executable
`pcl_point_cloud_editor`	cli	global executable
`pcl_poisson_reconstruction`	cli	global executable
`pcl_ppf_object_recognition`	cli	global executable
`pcl_progressive_morphological_filter`	cli	global executable
`pcl_pyramid_surface_matching`	cli	global executable
`pcl_radius_filter`	cli	global executable
`pcl_registration_visualizer`	cli	global executable
`pcl_sac_segmentation_plane`	cli	global executable
`pcl_spin_estimation`	cli	global executable
`pcl_statistical_multiscale_interest_region_extraction_example`	cli	global executable
`pcl_stereo_ground_segmentation`	cli	global executable
`pcl_surfel_smoothing_test`	cli	global executable
`pcl_test_search_speed`	cli	global executable
`pcl_tiff2pcd`	cli	global executable
`pcl_timed_trigger_test`	cli	global executable
`pcl_train_linemod_template`	cli	global executable
`pcl_train_unary_classifier`	cli	global executable
`pcl_transform_from_viewpoint`	cli	global executable
`pcl_transform_point_cloud`	cli	global executable
`pcl_unary_classifier_segment`	cli	global executable
`pcl_uniform_sampling`	cli	global executable
`pcl_vfh_estimation`	cli	global executable
`pcl_viewer`	cli	global executable
`pcl_virtual_scanner`	cli	global executable
`pcl_vlp_viewer`	cli	global executable
`pcl_voxel_grid`	cli	global executable
`pcl_voxel_grid_occlusion_estimation`	cli	global executable
`pcl_vtk2obj`	cli	global executable
`pcl_vtk2pcd`	cli	global executable
`pcl_vtk2ply`	cli	global executable
`pcl_xyz2pcd`	cli	global executable

freshness

Version and freshness

These signals separate page generation age, package-manager activity, and upstream release comparison. Version lag is warned only when an evidence URL and comparable versions are present.

page generated2026-11-04

manager version1.15.1

manager updated2026-10-30

local dataok

upstreamcurrent

latest detectedpcl-1.15.1

https://github.com/PointCloudLibrary/pcl

okNo freshness warnings were generated.

install metadata

Package metadata

Package key	brew:pcl
Version	1.15.1
Package manager	Homebrew
Package manager page	https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/pcl
Homepage	https://pointclouds.org/
Repository	https://github.com/PointCloudLibrary/pcl
Upstream docs	https://pointclouds.org/
License	BSD-3-Clause
Source archive	https://github.com/PointCloudLibrary/pcl/archive/refs/tags/pcl-1.15.1.tar.gz
Last updated	2026-10-30T11:15:12+02:00
Pulse	updated
Dependencies	boost, cjson, eigen, flann, freetype, glew, libomp, libpcap, libpng, libusb, lz4, qhull, qtbase, vtk
Build dependencies	cmake, pkgconf
Bottle	available (on arm64_golden_gate, arm64_linux, arm64_sequoia, arm64_sonoma, arm64_tahoe, sonoma, x86_64_linux)
Homebrew post-install	not defined
Service	none declared

registry facts

Source database details

Source Database	Homebrew formula API
Tap	homebrew/core
Full Name	pcl
Version Scheme	0
Revision	8
Head Version	HEAD
Bottle Stable Root URL	https://ghcr.io/v2/homebrew/core
Deprecated	no
Disabled	no
Keg Only	no
URL Keys	head stable

source database matches

Other package-manager records

Matches are pulled from external package-manager indexes and kept separate from local Automic Vault package links.

Debian apt95%

libpcl-apps1.15 1.15.0+dfsg-2

Point Cloud Library - apps library