Sergio Gómez   
Departament d'Enginyeria Informàtica i Matemàtiques
Universitat Rovira i Virgili

Radalib

Ada library and tools for the analysis of Complex Networks and more

Index

Description

Radalib is a library we have continuously been updating for our research within the Alephsys research group, led by Alex Arenas, at Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV), Tarragona, since 2004. Previous experience showed that the continuous reuse of code was a painful task, thus we decided to be more structured and separate general purpose code (e.g. manipulation of networks and partitions) from the specific details of particular applications (e.g. Monte Carlo simulation of epidemic spreading). The result was the development of a general purpose library, mostly devoted to complex networks, and developed around abstract data types. This means the types are defined as "private", with public subprograms operating on them and encapsulating their implementations, thus allowing for future enhancements without having to modify the programs already using them. We could have used object oriented programming, but we believe polymorphism and inheritance are basically useless for this kind of applications.

The selected language was Ada, for several reasons: performance (it is a compiled language, not interpreted), readable code, support for abstract data types, strict data type system (allows catching many errors at compile time), advanced support of generics, high level support for concurrent programming (just in case it is needed), availability of high quality compilers for the main platforms (Windows, Linux, MacOS), and the confidence in your code when using it. The main drawback was the absence of code from other people we could reuse, but that was not a problem since we wanted full control and detailed understanding of every line of code used for our research.

Radalib is structured in three parts: source (the library itself), test and tools. Tools are programs which solve a certain problem, e.g. community detection, partitions comparison, network properties, connected components, file format conversion, etc., and which are basically mere interfaces to functionalities given by the library. The requests to make public implementations of some of the algorithms presented in our scientific papers led to the publication of Radatools, which are just executables for Windows, Linux and MacOS of some of the Radalib tools.

Structure

Radalib contains the following folders or directories:

The size of Radalib as of version radalib-20230326-204401 is:

Compilation

Radalib has been programmed using the Ada language, and with the aid of the GNAT Ada Community Edition compilers from Adacore. Follow the indications in your corresponding "howto" file to install GNAT and compile radalib:

Download

You may download and contribute to the development of Radalib at GitHub:

Authors

Sergio Gómez:

Alberto Fernández: