Astro-satpass is Copyright (C) 2005-2021 by Thomas R. Wyant, III

DESCRIPTION

This package contains classes needed to predict satellite visibility,
and a demonstration application (satpass) that makes use of these
classes. The classes themselves are:

Astro::Coord::ECI - superclass (coordinate transforms)
Astro::Coord::ECI::Moon - Predict location of the Moon.
Astro::Coord::ECI::Star - Predict location of a star.
Astro::Coord::ECI::Sun - Predict location of the Sun.
Astro::Coord::ECI::TLE - Predict location of a satellite.
Astro::Coord::ECI::TLE::Set - Aggregation of TLEs, with ability
    to use the correct TLE depending on time.
Astro::Coord::ECI::Utils - Constants and utility subroutines.

The following has been moved to its own package:

Astro::Coord::ECI::TLE::Iridium - Subclass of TLE, with the ability
    to predict flares.

INSTALLATION

Most Perl users will want to install using their favorite of 'cpan',
'cpanm', or 'cpanp'. For any of these, installing Astro::Coord::ECI gets
you everything. ActivePerl users who use ActiveState's 'ppi' should
install Astro-satpass.

If for some reason neither of these works for you, you can download the
distribution and expand it using something like

    tar -xzf Astro-satpass-9.999.tar.gz

Users of MSWin32 (and perhaps other operating systems) may need to
convert the line endings in the expanded files from Unix to their native
system before proceeding.

Then, issue one of the following two incantations:

    perl Makefile.PL
    make
    make test
    sudo make install

or

    perl Build.PL
    ./Build
    ./Build test
    sudo ./Build install

You should substitute the appropriate program name for 'make', eg nmake
(typically) under MSWin32, or mms or mmk under VMS. See
ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/Softlib/MSLFILES/nmake15.exe for a copy of
nmake for MSWin32 if you need it.

Unix users may want to use 'su' rather than 'sudo' for the install.
Non-unix users may need to be logged in to an administrative or
otherwise privileged accout, and turn on privileges (if applicable) for
the install.

Of course, since it's pure Perl, you can just expand the kit and drop
the .pm files into the Astro/Coord/ECI directory (creating it if
necessary) in the appropriate place in your @INC directories.

LICENSING INFORMATION

This package is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the same terms as Perl 5.10.0. For more details, see the full text
of the licenses in the directory LICENSES.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
without any warranty; without even the implied warranty of
merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

This README covers MacPerl and Mac OS classic. If you are running
Darwin (i.e. Mac OS X) this information does not apply.

There are some extra steps necessary to use this module with
MacPerl, mostly because of the difficulty of installing extra
modules. But you CAN get there if you have a copy of Stuffit
Expander.

What you need to do is to obtain and expand the following
distributions from CPAN:

Astro-satpass
Astro-SpaceTrack
DateManip
IO-String

Once you have expanded the required kits, you need to convert
them from Unix line terminations to Mac line terminations. This
is not bad, just tedious. You need to make a MacPerl droplet out
of the following Perl script:

foreach (@ARGV) {
    my $fn = $_;
    print "Reading $fn\n";
    open (IN, "<$fn") or die <<eod;
Error - Failed to open input file $fn
        $!
eod
    my @data;
    while (<IN>) {push @data, split ('\r', $_)}
    close IN;
    print "Writing $fn\n";
    open (OUT, ">$fn") or die <<eod;
Error - Failed to open output file $fn
        $!
eod
    foreach (@data) {print OUT "$_\n"}
    close OUT;
    }


Then go through the expanded directories and delete any files except
the contents of the 'bin' folder, and files that end in '.pm'. Drop the
.pm files onto your droplet. It will save the converted file over the
original.

Once you have done this, open folder 'MacPerl f' (or wherever
your MacPerl is). Find the site_perl folder and open it. Create
folders 'Astro', 'Date', and 'IO'. In folder 'Astro', create
folder 'Coord'. Drag SpaceTrack.pm and the SpaceTrack folder
with it into the 'Astro' folder. Drag ECI.pm and the ECI folder
with it into the 'Coord' folder. Drag Manip.pm into the 'Date'
folder. Drag String.pm into the 'IO' folder.

Now find the satpass script in the bin folder of the
Astro-satpass distribution. Run it through your droplet, and
save the output to some convenient location. Then, open the
script in MacPerl. MacPerl will complain about it being too
big to edit, and invite you to save it. Save it as an
executable. Then launch it.

The initialization file goes wherever you put your executable.
You should put into the initialization file at least the
statement

set tz your_time_zone_setting

Unfortunately what you need for the time zone setting is not
well-defined. You can try the Date::Manip docs. I live on
the east coast of the U.S., and EST5EDT works for me.

Caveats:

Date::Manip is a heavyweight but useful module. Unfortunately,
it also assumes that time 0 is January 1, 1970. But MacPerl's
time 0 is January 1, 1904. Rather than try to get this patched,
I have simply had the satpass script add a fudge factor. This
implementation will break if Date::Manip ever gets wise to
"non-standard" epochs. Be aware of this should you decide to
use Date::Manip for other purposes.

The satpass script's 'help' function doesn't work under MacPerl.
This is because it tries to parse the POD out of the script, but
when MacPerl converts the script to an executable, the POD gets
lost. You can find the docs by hunting up the package at
https://metacpan.org/release/Astro-satpass