Abstraction Layer for Ephemerides (ALE)

This library allows for the position, rotation, velocity and rotational velocity tracking of multiple bodies in space, especially in relation to one another. It makes extensive use of NAIF's SPICE data for such calculations.

Setting up dependencies with conda (RECOMMENDED)

Install conda (either Anaconda or Miniconda) if you do not already have it. Installation instructions may be found here.

Creating an isolated conda environment

(TODO This command will need to be updated) Run the following commands to create a self-contained dev environment for ale (type y to confirm creation):

conda env create -n ale -f environment.yml

For more information: conda environments

Activating the environment

After creating the ale environment, we need to activate it. The activation command depends on your shell.

• bash: source activate ale
• tcsh: conda activate ale

You can add these to the end of your $HOME/.bashrc or $HOME/.cshrc if you want the ale environment to be active in every new terminal.

Building ALE

After you've set up and activated your conda environment, you may then build ale. Inside of a cloned fork of the repository, follow these steps:

python setup.py install
cd build
cmake ..
make

Keep in mind that you will need to clone the repository with the --recursive flag in order to retrieve the gtest submodule for testing. If you have already cloned without the --recusive flag, running the following command will retrieve the gtest submodule manually:

git submodule update --init --recursive

Running Tests

To run ctests to test c++ part of ale, run:

ctest

from the build directory.