Active Libraries: Rethinking the roles of compilers and libraries
Numerical Analysis
2025-10-20 v1 Numerical Analysis
Programming Languages
Abstract
We describe Active Libraries, which take an active role in compilation. Unlike traditional libraries which are passive collections of functions and objects, Active Libraries may generate components, specialize algorithms, optimize code, configure and tune themselves for a target machine, and describe themselves to tools (such as profilers and debuggers) in an intelligible way. Several such libraries are described, as are implementation technologies.
Cite
@article{arxiv.math/9810022,
title = {Active Libraries: Rethinking the roles of compilers and libraries},
author = {Todd L. Veldhuizen and Dennis Gannon},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:math/9810022},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
16 pages, 1998 SIAM Workshop on Object Oriented Methods for Inter-operable Scientific and Engineering Computing