groot

groot is an interactive nuclear spectrum analysis environment built on CERN ROOT.

The project adds domain-specific histogram classes, canvas interactions, and analysis helpers for low-energy nuclear physics. Its goal is to make large multi-dimensional spectra easier to inspect, gate, project, fit, and compare inside ROOT.

Current development focuses on enhanced 1D and 2D histogram workflows. Longer term, groot is intended to grow toward higher-dimensional spectrum objects, including cubes and hypercubes, through a more general GHn-style interface.

Why groot?

ROOT already provides the foundation for histogramming, fitting, drawing, and I/O. groot adds the layer needed for day-to-day nuclear spectrum analysis: interactive markers, keyboard-driven canvas actions, enriched histogram behavior, and tools that turn common analysis steps into first-class operations.

Highlights

• Enhanced histogram workflows for nuclear spectrum analysis
• Marker-driven fitting, gating, zooming, projections, and cuts
• Interactive canvases tuned for fast histogram inspection
• Tools for working with large ROOT histograms and multi-dimensional spectra
• Peak fitting and residual inspection from the ROOT prompt or canvas
• Region-of-interest counting on 1D spectra
• 2D projections onto selected X/Y ranges
• Histomatic GUI browser for ROOT files
• Optional live histogram connections
• Runtime customization through .gintrc

Requirements

groot currently builds against a custom CERN ROOT installation.

Known requirements:

• CERN ROOT with GUI support
• CMake 3.13 or newer
• A C++ compiler compatible with the ROOT build
• Make or another CMake-supported build tool

groot uses ROOT histograms, canvases, fitting, I/O, GUI widgets, and dictionary generation. ROOT should be built with the corresponding components enabled.

Build

Source your ROOT environment first:

source /path/to/root/bin/thisroot.sh

Then build:

make

The default make target configures CMake in build/, builds groot, and copies the executable to bin/.

You can also build directly with CMake:

cmake -S . -B build
cmake --build build -j4

Packaged ROOT Status

Building against package-manager ROOT installations, such as Homebrew or apt ROOT, is a project goal but is not yet verified. The current known-good path is a custom ROOT build with the required GUI and dictionary support enabled.

Quick Start

Start the interactive prompt:

./bin/groot

Open the GUI with a ROOT file:

./bin/groot -g data.root

Show command-line help:

./bin/groot -h

Basic Interaction

Key	Action
?	Show shortcut help
g	Fit or gate from markers
x / y	Project a 2D histogram
p	on 1d projection, project onto the other axis between markers
c	set subtract region between markers for p
w / q	Rebin / unbin
m	Remove markers
o	Unzoom
r	Create a region of interest
R	Remove regions of interest

Repository Layout

Path	Purpose
src/	Main executable
include/	Public headers
libraries/GRoot/	Histogram, canvas, marker, ROI, fit, and projection tools
libraries/Histomatic/	GUI browser
libraries/GCore/	Options, live connections, and object management
libraries/GApp/	ROOT interactive application wrapper
libraries/GTools/	Nuclear and transition helper types
scripts/	Analysis helper macros and scripts
docs/	Additional usage notes

Documentation

The README is intended as a starting point: what groot is, what it needs, and how to build and launch it. Detailed workflows, keyboard and mouse behavior, configuration notes, and developer documentation belong in the project wiki or the files under docs/.