User’s Guide for Toolkit Developers

Scope of this Manual

The User’s Guide for Toolkit Developers provides detailed information about the design of Geant4 classes as well as the information required to extend the current functionality of the Geant4 toolkit. This manual is designed to:

  • provide a repository of information for those who want to understand or refer to the detailed design of the toolkit, and

  • provide details and procedures for extending the functionality of the toolkit so that experienced users may contribute code which is consistent with the overall design of Geant4.

This manual is intended for developers and experienced users of Geant4. It is assumed that the reader is already familiar with functionality of the Geant4 toolkit as explained in the “User’s Guide For Application Developers”, and also has a working knowledge of programming using C++. A knowledge of object-oriented analysis and design will also be useful in understanding this manual. It is also useful to consult the “Software Reference Manual” which provides a list of Geant4 classes and their major methods.

Detailed discussions of the physics included in Geant4 are provided in the “Physics Reference Manual”.

Contents

Status of this Document

Guide for developers of the Geant4 toolkit.

  • Rev 1.0: First Sphinx version implemented for Geant4 Release 10.4, 8th Dec 2017

  • Rev 2.0: Updates and fixes in documentatio for Geant4 Release 10.4, 15th May 2018

  • Rev 3.0: Geant4 Release 10.5, 11th December 2018

  • Rev 3.1: Geant4 Updates and fixes - especially to search functionality, 5th March 2019

  • Rev 4.0: Geant4 Release 10.6, 6th December 2019

  • Rev 5.0: Geant4 Release 10.7, 4th December 2020

  • Rev 6.0: Geant4 Release 11.0, 10th December 2021

  • Rev 7.0: Geant4 Release 11.1, 9th December 2022

  • Rev 7.1: Geant4 Fixes to http links, 15th July 2023

  • Rev 8.0: Geant4 Release 11.2, 8th December 2023