CERN Program Library

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title: "CERN Program Library" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["fortran-libraries", "free-mathematics-software", "free-physics-software", "free-software-programmed-in-fortran", "numerical-software", "cern-software"] description: "Legacy scientific programming software collection by CERN" topic_path: "science/mathematics" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CERN_Program_Library" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Legacy scientific programming software collection by CERN ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox software"]

Field	Value
name	CERN Program Library
developer	CERN
latest_release_version
latest_release_date
operating_system	Cross-platform
genre	Technical computing
license	GNU General Public License, except for GEANT
website
::

| name = CERN Program Library | developer = CERN | latest_release_version = | latest_release_date = | operating_system = Cross-platform | genre = Technical computing | license = GNU General Public License, except for GEANT | website = The CERN Program Library (CERNLIB) is a collection of general purpose software libraries and program modules for scientific computing, developed at the European Organization for Nuclear Research CERN.{{Cite web |url=https://cernlib.web.cern.ch/cernlib/ |title=Cern Program Library |publisher=European Organization for Nuclear Research |date=2014-10-10 |access-date=2023-02-22

The major fields covered by the libraries contained therein were:

• Elementary particle data
• Graphics and plotting
• Histograming
• I/O and structured data storage
• Numerical analysis
• Statistics and data analysis
• Detector simulation and Hadronic event generation

Lower-level parts of the CERN Program Library were most prominently used by the data analysis software Physics Analysis Workstation (PAW) and the detector simulation framework GEANT, both of which are also part of the CERN Program Library.

CERN Program Library used the year as its version, with not explicitly denoted minor revisions within a year. Besides legacy software dependency, for newer applications written in C++, CERNLIB is superseded by ROOT.

Status

Development and support for CERNLIB was discontinued in 2003. Libraries were still available "as is" "for ever" from the CERNLIB web site but with no new code, no user support and no port to IA-64.

The code was revitalized in 2022, multiple patches were added and as of 2023 the code can be compiled on multiple architectures either with its native build system imake or with the CMake. The revitalized version is based on the CERNLIB release 2006.

References

References

1. (2023). "CERNLIB status".

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::