The visualization toolkit (vtk) is an object oriented, high level library that allows one to easily write c++ programs, tcl, python and java scripts that do 3d visualization.

vtk enables users to concentrate on their work by providing a large number of excellent and feature packed high level functions that do visualization. the library needs opengl to render the graphics and for linux machines mesa is necessary. the terms/copyright can be read in /usr/share/doc/vtk/readme and readme.html. vtk-linux-howto has information about using vtk, getting documentataion or help and instructions on building vtk.

this package provides the shared libraries needed to run c++ programs that use vtk.

to compile c++ code that uses vtk you have to install libvtk5-dev.