xstar-tools documentation

xstar-tools provides Python, command-line, shared-C++, and native interfaces for XSTAR atomic data and source-faithful XSTAR execution. Distribution/productization versions evolve independently from the accepted scientific revision.

Accepted native non-MPI portability baseline: Linux GCC x86_64, macOS arm64/x86_64 with Apple Clang, and Windows MSYS2 UCRT64/MinGW-w64. Windows conda packages are not supported; MSVC and Windows MPI are not planned. Local Windows parallelism is available through xstar-xspec --processes N.

User guide

• User guide
  • Installation
  • Windows native installation and usage
  • Command-line interfaces
  • Atomic-data setup
  • First run
  • Configuration
  • Choosing a backend
  • Output products
  • Reproducibility and provenance
  • Performance expectations
  • Troubleshooting

Python guide

• Python guide
  • Running XSTAR from Python
  • Atomic database API
  • Reading XSTAR output products
  • XSTAR2XSPEC from Python

Python API

• Python API reference
  • Stable execution API
  • Atomic-data API
  • Output-reader API
  • XSTAR2XSPEC Python API

C++ and CLI

• C++ and native CLI reference
  • Native build
  • xstar-cpp
  • xstar-xspec-initable
  • xstar-xspec-table
  • xstar-xspec
  • xstar-xspec-mpi
  • C ABI

Developer guide

• Developer guide
  • XSTAR tools architecture at the parity-freeze boundary
  • Execution modes
  • Cross-platform portability status
  • Qualification policy
  • Performance rules
  • Versioning and science freeze
  • Fortran source map
  • Python / C++ / Fortran concordance
  • Python / FORTRAN source correspondence comments
  • C++ / FORTRAN source correspondence comments
  • Function-level source comments
  • Stable public Python API
  • Unified CLI contract
  • xstar-cpp native executable contract — 0.6.69
  • Native C ABI contract
  • Adding or changing atomic-data/rate support
  • Source-name hygiene and ABI naming
  • Production diagnostics policy for Python execution modes
  • XSTAR2XSPEC / xstar2table source concordance — 0.6.81
  • Reference data and release candidates
  • CI and release engineering
  • Packaging and native-wheel policy
  • Conda packaging
  • Documentation authoring and build policy
  • Building the documentation

Science guide

• Science guide
  • Algorithm overview
  • Data-type and rate-type semantics
  • XSTAR scientific references and implementation correspondence
  • Equations and source correspondence

History

• Project history

Useful starting points:

• Installation — installation and native source-build prerequisites;

• Command-line interfaces — current command-line entry points and compatibility commands;

• Atomic-data setup — atdb.fits / coheat.dat discovery and setup;

• Python guide — Python execution, atomic-data, output, and XSPEC-table workflows;

• C++ and native CLI reference — complete native executable reference;

• Qualification policy — current compact qualification/freeze policy.