Developer guide

The active developer documentation is organized by current architectural and release concerns rather than by every historical milestone. Closed milestone notes and one-off qualification narratives are preserved in version-control history and release tags.

• XSTAR tools architecture at the parity-freeze boundary
  • Authority and change policy
  • Canonical execution layers
  • Python architecture
  • C++ architecture
  • Public execution envelopes
  • Scientific invariants that architecture work must preserve
  • Refactor gate
  • Stable public execution modes
• Execution modes
  • XSTAR2XSPEC concurrency is separate
• Cross-platform portability status
  • Current accepted release
  • Accepted fixed-state cross-platform contract
  • Portability boundaries
  • Historical portability sequence
  • Build policy
• Qualification policy
  • Cross-platform portability qualification
• Performance rules
• Versioning and science freeze
• Fortran source map
  • Routine-level concordance
  • Top-level startup and initialization
  • Parameter and default-REAL semantics
  • Atomic-database pointer ownership
  • Two-stage ion and level population solve
  • Thermal construction and dsec
  • Reduced-grid versus full-grid spectral paths
  • STEP print-option map
  • Terminal/final-output lifetime
  • Related documents
• Python / C++ / Fortran concordance
  • How to read the map
  • Concordance matrix
  • Detailed equivalence notes
  • Pinned-source comment policy
  • Refactor checklist
  • C++ source correspondence comments and 0.6.54 native-layout refactor
  • 0.6.55 Python source-comment overlay
  • 0.6.56 active-namespace note
• Python / FORTRAN source correspondence comments
  • Atomic-data terminology
  • Maintenance rule
• C++ / FORTRAN source correspondence comments
  • Important interpretation rules
  • Maintenance rule
• Function-level source comments
  • Source hierarchy
  • Reference set reviewed for this pass
  • What the comments explain
  • Reversible overlay
  • Maintenance rule
• Stable public Python API
  • Configuration contract
  • Result contract
  • Compatibility boundary
• Unified CLI contract
  • User commands
  • Development and qualification namespaces
  • Logging
• xstar-cpp native executable contract — 0.6.69
  • Normal use
  • xstar-cpp extensions
  • Scientific-control architecture
  • ABI behavior
  • Qualification
• Native C ABI contract
  • Public XSTAR API
  • Production-zone ABI
  • Compatibility rules
• Adding or changing atomic-data/rate support
• Source-name hygiene and ABI naming
  • Warning-only annotations
• Production diagnostics policy for Python execution modes
  • Scope
  • Public production behavior
  • Explicit debugging
  • 0.6.75 three-model benchmark review
• XSTAR2XSPEC / xstar2table source concordance — 0.6.81
  • Canonical sources reviewed
  • Canonical pipeline
  • FITS input contract
  • Energy slicing
  • Spectral transforms
  • XSPEC table schema
  • Parameter and job ordering
  • Energy-grid consistency improvement
  • Scope boundary
  • 0.6.81.1 canonical 2x3-grid closure
• Reference data and release candidates
• CI and release engineering
  • Current always-on gates
  • Optional deeper qualification/report helpers
• Packaging and native-wheel policy
  • Authoritative configuration
  • Why setuptools remains the build backend
  • Native wheel construction
  • Wheel contents
  • Data policy
  • Release checks
  • Conda packaging
• Conda packaging
• Documentation authoring and build policy
  • Release documentation gates
  • Current versus historical documentation
• Building the documentation
  • Install the Sphinx dependencies
  • External tools for LaTeX/PDF
  • HTML
  • LaTeX source
  • PDF: LaTeX -> DVI -> PostScript -> PDF
  • Link checking and release documentation
  • Windows helper

Release-history records are indexed under Project history.