Open Applied Topology

Open applied topology (OAT) is a library for fast, user-friendly algebra and topology. OAT has

• a user-friendly frontend for Python users, called oat_python
• a fast backend written in Rust, called oat_rust
• a variety of tutorials published as jupyter notebooks

This package contains the source code for oat_python.

Caution: breaking changes

OAT is in early stages of develpoment, and it's evolving quickly. Code that you write today may not work tomorrow, due to these changes. We will do our very best to make sure that if/when this happens, you will only need to make small changes to your code to fix the problem (e.g., updating the name of a function). However, please do bear this in mind as you write your code!

Install and explore

Python users Can install oat_python through PyPI using any package manager, for example pip install oat_python, conda_install oat_python, etc. Explore the Jupyter notebook tutorials on GitHub!

Developers Everyone is a developer, and everyone is invited to modify and extend the source code for this package! oat_python is a combination of Rust and Python code. We developed oat_python using PyO3 and maturin. To download and modify oat_python, then install and use the modified version, check out the instructions for Python Installation from source, below.

Documentation

Documentation for OAT-Python is currently under development.

Python users The best resources currently available are

• Jupyter notebook tutorials available on the OAT homepage
• Docstrings available through Python's help() function.

Rust Developers If you are interested in modifying the Rust code in OAT-Python, see the API documenation for oat_python available at Crates.io. You may also find it helpful to explore the documenation for PyO3 and Maturin, which are the packages used to link Rust and Python.

Python Developers Documentation for the Python API is not available at this time (we are working to address this). In the meantime we have done our best to document the code with docstrings, and encourage you to check out the source code directly.

Contributing

For information on contributing, see CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

For inforamtion on copyright and licensing, see LICENSE.

Attributions

OAT is an extension of the ExHACT library. See ATTRIBUTIONS.md for details.

Python Installation from source

1. Download and install the most recent version of Rust. Make sure your installation is up to date by running rustup update in a command shell.

2. Create a virtual Python environment, e.g. using Anaconda, or open one that you already have. In this example, let's assume the environment name is myenv. Activate myenv, and run

   pip install maturin
   

   A number of warning messages may appear; this is normal.

   If you already have maturin installed, make sure it is up to date!

3. Clone a copy of oat_python. Open a shell and CD into the oat_python folder. Activate myenv and run

   maturin develop --release
   

4. oat_python should now be installed. Try running the Jupyter notebooks with myenv!