Application Library Framework (ALF)

This is the python framework for developing apps for the QCI Connect platform of the German Aerospace Center (DLR). It is a component of the QCI Connect SDK.

It contains classes to streamline implementing quantum algorithms, error mitigation schemes, and circuit building strategies for QCI Connect and to unify problems and results for cross-compatibility of applications.

Documentation

You can find the documentations here.

The documentation files are also included in the source and can be built with the script dev_tools/build_docs.

Quick Start (Pip Installation)

• Run pip install qciconnect-alf
• Take a look at the tutorial notebooks

Working on Source Code (Dev Mode)

Clone the repository (or download the .tar.gz file), initialize the git submodules, then install dependencies.

We recommend using ultraviolet (installation guide).

git submodule update --init
uv sync
git submodule foreach "uv pip install -e ."

This installs ALF, its runtime dependencies, the dev/test dependencies, and the QCIConnect submodules as editable local dependencies. Recursive submodule initialization is not required. The client submodule uses the root checkout at submodules/qciconnect/common, not a nested checkout below submodules/qciconnect/client.

You can now activate the .venv in the source directory or use uv to run commands in the .venv, e. g., uv run python my_script.py.

Be careful: every time you run uv sync to update the venv, the local submodules need to be reinstalled again (git submodule foreach "uv pip install -e ."); otherwise, the venv would use the latest releases on PyPI instead of the local submodules, so any custom changes or checkouts you do in the submodules would be invisible to the venv.

To avoid typing out both commands, you can run the script update-venv from within the activated venv (the script is provided via qciconnect-common). It performs both steps at once and provides options to exclude (--exclude <submodule_list>) specific submodules.

In short: every time you would typically run uv sync, you should instead run

update-venv