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In scientific applications, physical quantities and units of measurement are used regularly. If the inherent incompatibility between these units is not handled properly it can lead to major, sometimes catastrophic, problems. Although the risk of a miscalculation is high and the cost equally so, almost none of the major programming languages has support for physical quantities. Instead, scientific code developers often make their own tools or rely on external libraries to help them spot or prevent these mistakes.

We employed a systematic approach to examine and analyse all available physical quantity open-source libraries. Approximately 3700 search results across seven repository hosting sites were condensed into a list of 82 of the most comprehensive and well-developed libraries currently available. In this group, 30 different programming languages are represented. Out of these 82 libraries, 38 have been updated …