Meshroom integration¶

The reference Meshroom GUI is PyQt5/QML + Python. On macOS it doesn't work out-of-the-box because (a) the setupEnvironment() host-OS branch doesn't include Darwin, (b) nvidia-smi is Linux-only, (c) /proc/cgroup doesn't exist on macOS, and (d) readlink -f is GNU-only.

This repo addresses those four issues with out-of-tree patches (the upstream Meshroom and AliceVision trees are never modified on disk).

What ships¶

patches/
├── meshroom/                          (Meshroom-app patches)
│   ├── 01-init-darwin-libpath.patch
│   ├── 02-stats-darwin-gpu.patch
│   ├── 03-cgroup-darwin-sysctl.patch
│   ├── 04-startsh-readlink-portable.patch
│   └── README.md
└── alicevision-meshroom/              (Meshroom node-descriptor patches)
    ├── 01-sfm-output-ply-sfm-not-abc.patch
    ├── 02-meshing-output-ply-not-abc.patch
    └── README.md

meshroom-mac/                          (working copy of Meshroom with patches applied)
meshroom-venv/                         (Python venv: PySide6, psutil, pyseq, ...)
scripts/run_meshroom.sh                (wrapper: sets env, exec's your command)

Meshroom patches (4)¶

Upstream target: alicevision/Meshroom branch develop at commit 0ab90c0b36df0c9773483a25aa95d91c5696f9d0 (v2025.1.5-114-g0ab90c0b).

#	Patch	What it does	Upstream-PR ready?
01	`01-init-darwin-libpath.patch`	Adds a `darwin` branch in `setupEnvironment()` setting `DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH` from `ALICEVISION_LIBPATH`, mirroring the Linux `LD_LIBRARY_PATH` setup.	Yes
02	`02-stats-darwin-gpu.patch`	Replaces `nvidia-smi` with a `system_profiler SPDisplaysDataType` probe for `gpuName` and `gpuMemoryTotal`. Live per-process GPU stats deferred.	Needs maintainer review
03	`03-cgroup-darwin-sysctl.patch`	Short-circuits the Linux `/proc/<pid>/cgroup` probes on Darwin and uses `sysctl hw.memsize` / `sysctl hw.ncpu` instead.	Yes
04	`04-startsh-readlink-portable.patch`	Replaces GNU-only `readlink -f` in `start.sh` with `python3 -c 'os.path.realpath(...)'`.	Yes

All four pass git apply --check against the pinned upstream commit. Patches 1, 3, 4 are clean platform-gated additive changes; patch 2 has two design choices the upstream maintainer may want to revisit (cost of system_profiler on first launch, gpuMemoryTotal as "8 GB" string vs integer MiB).

Apply the Meshroom patches¶

cd /path/to/your/meshroom-fork
git apply /path/to/alicevision-for-mac/patches/meshroom/*.patch

For day-to-day use the repository ships a pre-applied working copy at meshroom-mac/ — scripts/run_meshroom.sh points MESHROOM_NODES_PATH and PYTHONPATH at it.

AliceVision node-descriptor patches (2)¶

Upstream target: alicevision/AliceVision (the node-descriptors at AliceVision/meshroom/aliceVision/*.py).

#	Patch	What it does	Upstream-PR ready?
01	`01-sfm-output-ply-sfm-not-abc.patch`	`StructureFromMotion.py`: default `output` → `sfm.sfm` (SfMData JSON), `interFileExtension` → `.ply`. Avoids the "AliceVision is built without Alembic support" fatal.	No — hard-coded fallback. Cleaner upstream would query AliceVision capabilities.
02	`02-meshing-output-ply-not-abc.patch`	`Meshing.py`: dense point cloud default → `densePointCloud.ply` (downstream Texturing reads PLY transparently).	No, same reason.

Both patches are applied in the working copy at meshroom-mac/nodes/. They are required because the macOS build sets ALICEVISION_HAVE_ALEMBIC=0 (we haven't built Alembic on Apple Silicon yet).

Python venv¶

The Meshroom runtime is Python. The repo provides a pre-seeded venv at meshroom-venv/ containing PySide6, psutil, pyseq, and the other Meshroom runtime deps.

Use the bundled venvRecreate from scratch

source meshroom-venv/bin/activate
pip list   # PySide6, psutil, pyseq, ...

python3 -m venv meshroom-venv
source meshroom-venv/bin/activate
pip install PySide6 psutil pyseq
# plus any other deps Meshroom 2026.1.0 needs at runtime

Running a job¶

The canonical end-user invocation is meshroom_batch through scripts/run_meshroom.sh:

./scripts/run_meshroom.sh python meshroom-mac/bin/meshroom_batch \
    -i dataset_monstree/mini3 \
    -o /tmp/monstree-out \
    -p photogrammetryLegacy

The script sets:

ALICEVISION_ROOT=$ROOT/build/alicevision_root
ALICEVISION_BIN_PATH=$ROOT/build
ALICEVISION_SENSOR_DB=$ROOT/build/alicevision_root/share/aliceVision/cameraSensors.db
ALICEVISION_OCIO=$ROOT/build/alicevision_root/share/aliceVision/config.ocio
ALICEVISION_LIBPATH=/opt/homebrew/lib
DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/homebrew/lib
MESHROOM_NODES_PATH=$ROOT/meshroom-mac/nodes
MESHROOM_PIPELINE_TEMPLATES_PATH=$ROOT/meshroom-mac/nodes
PYTHONPATH=$ROOT/meshroom-mac:$ROOT/src/python_shim

src/python_shim carries a tiny pure-Python pyalicevision shim used by some Meshroom node descriptors for sizing decisions (the DynamicViewsSize fix for prepareDenseScene lives here — see Developer → Segmentation pipeline for the related node-descriptor patterns).

On the (retired) SwiftUI prototype¶

An earlier 0.1.0 release shipped a parallel native SwiftUI Meshroom prototype at meshroom-native/. It was retired on 2026-05-23 to consolidate work on the upstream-compatible PySide6 Meshroom (this page). Going forward there is one Meshroom frontend on macOS.