1
2                               PyEphem
3                          Installation Notes
4
5
6PyEphem provides an "ephem" Python module that can perform many
7astronomical computations.  You can find the most recent version at
8
9   http://rhodesmill.org/pyephem/
10
11The computation routines behind PyEphem are from the "XEphem" program
12by Elwood Charles Downey (ecdowney@ClearSkyInstitute.com), available
13from http://www.clearskyinstitute.com/xephem/.  See the COPYING file
14in this directory for licensing information.
15
16INSTALLING
17
18If you have installed the standard Python package tool "pip", then you
19can install PyEphem simply by typing:
20
21        pip install pyephem
22
23Alternately, if you are on a Windows machine, look at the PyEphem web
24site and you should find prominent links to an auto-install tool for
25Windows.
26
27If instead you want to build and install the module yourself, you only
28need Python, your C compiler, and the standard Python distutils.  You
29can run the setup.py script in this directory to build or install the
30package.  Typically, entering
31
32	python setup.py install
33
34(which you will probably need to do as root, unless you have Python
35installed in your home directory) will both build and install the
36module.
37
38You can use PyEphem in your Python programs by calling:
39
40	import ephem
41
42or perhaps something more like:
43
44	from ephem import Mars, Jupiter, Date
45
46if you know what parts of "ephem" you want to use and you are tired of
47putting "ephem." in front of all the names.
48
49TESTING
50
51Using the new "unittest" module in Python 2.7, you can run the PyEphem
52test suite this way:
53
54    $ python -m unittest discover
55
56On older versions of Python you can separately install the backported
57"unittest2" module and use its "unit2" command line to run the tests:
58
59    $ unit2 discover ephem
60
61DOCUMENTATION
62
63See the "doc" directory inside of the module for documentation, or
64visit the web site at http://rhodesmill.org/pyephem and try starting
65with the "Quick Reference" to learn how PyEphem works.
66
67AUTHOR
68
69Brandon Craig Rhodes
70brandon@rhodesmill.org
71http://rhodesmill.org/brandon
72