A comprehensive summary and categorization of physical quantity libraries

Sammanfattning: In scientific applications, physical quantities and units of measurement are used regularly. If the inherent incompatibility between these different units is not handled properly it can lead to major, and sometimes catastrophic, problems. Although the risk of a miscalculation is high and the cost equally so, almost no programming languages has support for physical quantities. Instead developers often rely on external libraries to help them spot these mistakes or prevent them all together. There are several hundred of these types of libraries, spread across multiple sites and with no simple way to get an overview. No one has summarized what has and has not been achieved so far in the area leading to many developers trying to ‘reinvent the wheel’ instead of building on what has already been done. This shows a clear need for this type of research. Employing a systematic approach to look through and analyze all available physical quantity libraries, the search results were condensed into 82 libraries which are presented in this thesis. These are the most comprehensive and well-developed, open-source libraries, chosen from approximately 3700 search results across seven repository hosting sites. In this group, 30 different programming languages are represented. The goal is for the results of this thesis to contribute to a shared foundation on which to build future libraries as well as provide an easy way of spreading knowledge about which libraries exist in the area, thus making it easier for more people to use them.