References

There are several ways to figure out how to do something in ROOT:

  • The ROOT web site. As of 2023, these are the areas of the ROOT manual on that site which are supposed to act as documentation:

    • The ROOT Reference. You’ve already visited this area. It contains the detailed description of the ROOT classes.

    • ROOT Basics. The web pages here outline a basic approach to ROOT. They assume you’re already familiar with C++ or Python. It’s especially useful if you don’t need the step-by-step hand-holding approach I took in this tutorial.

    • ROOT Functional Parts. While this describes the ROOT classes, it does so from a technical perspective rather than act as a teaching guide. For example, take a look at their introduction to histograms to see if its approach works for you.

  • The ROOT User’s Guide. As I’ve mentioned before, this is a bit out-of-date; it has not been revised since 2018 (and it appears it never will be). For example, there’s nothing in that guide about RDataFrames. But I feel it’s a much better tutorial for new users than any of the other items on this list.1

  • Create something “by hand,” save it as a .C file, then examine the file to see how ROOT does it.

There’s one other resource: the example ROOT programs that come with the package. There’s a ROOT-based command that will tell you where they are:

root-config --tutdir

When I ask myself the question “How do I do something complicated in ROOT?” I often find the answer in one of the examples they provide.

I’ve found it handy to make my own copy:2

> cp -arv `root-config --tutdir` $PWD

Then I go into the “tutorials” sub-directory, run their examples, and look at their code:

> cd tutorials
> root demos.C
> cd graphics
> root first.C
> less first.C

You can also find the tutorials on the ROOT web site, but I find it harder to search for specific examples.

The documentation is all over the place!

If the distributed nature of the information is annoying to you, welcome to the club! I often have to go hunting to find the answers I want when using ROOT, even after years of working with the package.

Occasionally I’ve had no other choice but to examine the C++ source code of the ROOT program itself to find out the answer to a question.

xkcd teaching_physics

Figure 66: https://xkcd.com/895/ by Randall Munroe. Perhaps this is the reason why the ROOT web site no longer teaches its concepts from scratch. It definitely explains the cartoons and jokes in this tutorial.

1

So what ROOT resources are out there that are both up-to-date and suitable for students who are not familiar with programming or data-analysis concepts? Unfortunately, the only one I know of is the tutorial you’re reading now!

2

I’m being tricky here by using the backtick in a UNIX command. In this particular case, what this does is take the output of the command root-config --tutdir and insert it into the command.