ESTHER

Python API for building, running, and reading esther simulations.

Table of contents

• Requirements
• Installation
• Quick start
• Features
• Examples
• Documentation
• License

Requirements

• Python ≥ 3.11 (the API uses the standard library tomllib)
• numpy ≥ 1.21, matplotlib ≥ 3.5 (installed automatically as dependencies)
• A working ESTHER installation

This package is a client for ESTHER: it does not ship the solver itself.

Installation

pip install esther

Quick start

On first import, ESTHER looks for a config file at ~/.config/esther/config.toml and prints setup instructions if none exists yet. Create it once:

import esther

cfg = esther.Config()
cfg.set("paths", "esther_root", "/path/to/ESTHER", autopath=True)
cfg.save()

An interactive terminal wizard that walks through the whole setup (installation root, display theme, default units) is also available in examples/Usage guide/config_assistant.py.

Everything it sets, ESTHER binary paths, temporary directories, the display theme, verbosity, and unit presets, is stored as TOML under ~/.config/esther/ and persists across sessions. It can all be read and changed later through esther.Config and esther.unit:

cfg = esther.Config()
cfg.get("paths", "esther_root")   # read back a setting
cfg.set("display", "theme", "matrix")
cfg.save()

Features

Examples

The examples/ directory is split in two.

examples/Usage guide/ is reference material, illustrating the API's usage patterns rather than something meant to be run as-is.

examples/Working examples/ are complete, runnable cases.

Documentation

Full API reference documentation is included in the repository under docs/. Open docs/esther.html in a browser to browse it locally.

License

CeCILL v2.1. See LICENSE.