Reaclib to Header File Utility

This utility module provides a script to convert reaclib2 format (with chapters 9, 10, and 11) data into a c++ header file formated for use within SERiF. This script uses preprocessor directives to ensure that the only reactions included are ones for which all reactants and products are defined. That is to say that at compile time this will cull any reaction for which we do not have data from AME2020. One effect of this is that the non-elemental reactions which reaclib traces (such as things like nrf, and pkrf) are not included in the reaction library.

Usage

There are no dependencies which are not part of a standard python installation

You will however need to provide the reaclib2 formated file. This can be downloaded from the reaclib snapshot library.

Assuming you download that file to your ~/Downloads directory, and it is called something like results123 then usage is as simple as

python format.py ~/Downloads/results123 -o reaclib.h

This will generate the reaclib.h header file in your current directory.

The c and T flags are optional, but they are used to set the culling parameter. c is the minimum rate that a reaction must have to be included in the header file and T is the T9 temperature to evaluate that rate at. Without culling (when -c is set to 0 or not set) the header file may be very large.

In order to make a translation unit reaclib.h depends on atomicSpecies.h which is another header file automatically generated by a utility module (utils/atomic).

atomicSpecies.h provides the Species structs which are used to ensure that only reactions where the reactants and products are species in AME2020 are included. This pretty significantly cuts down on compiled binary size. This is done using preprocessor directives.

Once reaclib.h has been generated you can recompile SERiF with it simply by running the following (from your SERiF root directory and assuming reaclib.h is in SERiF/utils/reaclib)

mv assets/static/reaclib/reaclib.h assets/static/reaclib/reaclib.h.bak
cp utils/reaclib/reaclib.h assets/static/reaclib/reaclib.h
meson compile -C build

All tests are run with the bundled reaclib.h based on a checkout of the reaclib default snapshot on June 17th, 2025 where the most recent documented change was on June 24th, 2021. This means that if you update reaclib.h some tests may fail.

For Developers

If you are updating the default reaclib.h file, please ensure that you also update any relevant tests and documentation to reflect the changes made.

Further, if in the future the parser needs updating, please ensure that those changes get upstreamed into this utility script. It is a key development guideline that all of our tools are well documented and easy for non SERiF developers to use.

Citations

REACLIB:

Rauscher, T., Heger, A., Hoffman, R. D., & Woosley, S. E. 2010, ApJS, 189, 240.