tesseract

What it is and what it does

TesseRACt is a specialized astrophysics package for computing concentration parameters of dark matter halos from N-body simulation particle data. It implements a Voronoi tessellation-based method that is non-parametric and does not assume spherical symmetry, allowing it to handle substructure in halos. The package includes a C program (vorovol) that computes Voronoi diagrams from particle data in multiple formats (Gadget-2, Gasoline, binary, ASCII) and halo catalogues, plus Python routines to compile, run, and parse its output.

The package also provides routines for computing concentrations using particle volumes, traditional NFW profile fitting, and non-parametric techniques assuming spherical symmetry. It was published alongside a peer-reviewed paper (Lang et al. 2015) and includes test halos and performance benchmarks from that work. However, the package has been abandoned since 2015-07-13 with no subsequent maintenance or updates.

Use it for:

• Analyze dark matter halo concentration in cosmological N-body simulations using Voronoi tessellation methods.
• Compare concentration estimates from non-parametric techniques against traditional NFW profile fitting.
• Process particle data from Gadget-2, Gasoline, or other simulation formats to compute halo properties.
• Reproduce or verify results from Lang et al. (2015) using the included test halos and benchmarks.

Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page — verify before relying

Computes dark matter halo concentration parameters from simulated particle data using Voronoi tessellation, a non-parametric technique that does not assume spherical symmetry.

No. The package is abandoned (last release 2015-07-13), has high install friction due to a C compilation requirement, and is unmaintained. While it implements a valid scientific technique, the lack of support for modern environments makes it unsuitable for new projects. Use only if reproducing historical results and you can manage C build issues independently.

Install

tesseract on PyPI

pip install tesseract

uv add tesseract

poetry add tesseract

Installing tesseract

Before you install

High install friction: the package is abandoned (last release 2015-07-13) and includes a compiled C component (vorovol) that must be built during installation. No active maintenance or support.

License in practice

Licensed under GPL (copyleft); any derivative work or distribution must also be open-source under compatible terms. The license_raw field is marked UNKNOWN, so verify the exact GPL version before integrating into proprietary code.

Quickstart

pip install tesseract==0.1.3
import tesseract
# Requires vorovol C program compilation and particle data in supported format

Requires a C compiler and build tools to compile the bundled vorovol program; no Python version constraint specified.

Verify before relying

• Exact GPL version (GPL v2, v3, or later) not specified in metadata; verify in source before use in proprietary projects.
• Whether the bundled vorovol C program has external build dependencies (e.g., Qhull) not listed in the fact sheet.
• Current compatibility with modern Python versions and compilers, given the 2015 release date and abandoned status.

Package facts

Evidence: tesseract-0.1.3.tar.gz

Tags

More Scientific/Engineering packages