Software

Scientific software is useful here only insofar as a reader can identify the calculation it performed, reconstruct its conditions, and test its output. This directory gives the provenance and rerun contract shared by symbolic, perturbative, numerical-relativity, ray-tracing, and inference workflows. It is not a ranking or catalog of programs, and it never treats an archived result as correct merely because it can be recovered.

Reconstruct a finite calculation

Reproducible Computational Environments gives the minimum record for a clean rerun: the scientific claim and comparison rule, exact source and inputs, resolved dependencies, execution platform, hardware and numerical controls, workflow, raw outputs, and preservation identities. It also separates bitwise, numerical-tolerance, and statistical agreement, because different products can require different tests.

The complete development is in Computational Experiments and Reproducible Workflows. That chapter builds the record through environment variation, data contracts, provenance, randomness, convergence evidence, and independent reproduction.

What this directory establishes

A record can make a finite calculation recoverable and falsifiable. It cannot turn byte identity into code verification, a successful execution into solution convergence, or agreement between two runs into validation of the physical model. Current tool versions, performance comparisons, security claims, and scientific benchmark results need their own dated evidence before they belong in a software comparison.