Installation

For Users

Parts of orbitize are written in C, so you’ll need gcc (a C compiler) to install properly. Most Linux and Windows computers come with gcc built in, but Mac computers don’t. If you haven’t before, you’ll need to download Xcode command line tools. There are several helpful guides online that teach you how to do this. Let us know if you have trouble!

orbitize is registered on pip, and works in Python>3.6. To install orbitize, first make sure you have the latest versions of numpy and cython installed. With pip, you can do this with the command:

$ pip install numpy cython --upgrade

Next, install orbitize:

$ pip install orbitize

We recommend installing and running orbitize in a conda virtual environment. Install anaconda or miniconda here, then see instructions here to learn more about conda virtual environments.

For Windows Users

Many of the packages that we use in orbitize were originally written for Linux or macOS. For that reason, we highly recommend installing the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) which is an entire Linux development environment within Windows. See here for a handy getting started guide.

If you don’t want to use WSL, there are a few extra steps you’ll need to follow to get orbitize running:

1. There is a bug with the ptemcee installation that, as far as we know, only affects Windows users. To work around this, download ptemcee from its pypi page. Navigate to the root ptemcee folder, remove the README.md file, then install:

$ cd ptemcee
$ rm README.md
$ pip install . --upgrade

2. Some users have reported issues with installing curses. If this happens to you, you can install windows-curses which should work as a replacement.

$ pip install windows-curses

3. Finally, rebound is not compatible with windows, so you’ll need to git clone orbitize, remove rebound from orbitize/requirements.txt, then install from the command line.

$ git clone https://github.com/sblunt/orbitize.git
$ cd orbitize

Open up orbitize/requirements.txt, remove rebound, and save.

$ pip install . --upgrade

For Developers

orbitize is actively being developed. The following method for installing orbitize will allow you to use it and make changes to it. After cloning the Git repository, run the following command in the top level of the repo:

$ pip install -r requirements.txt -e .

Issues?

If you run into any issues installing orbitize, please create an issue on GitHub.

If you are specifically having difficulties using cython to install orbitize, we suggest first trying to install wheel, then installing all of the orbitize dependencies (listed in requirements.txt).

If that doesn’t work, we suggest disabling compilation of the C-based Kepler module with the following alternative installation command:

$ pip install orbitize --install-option="--disable-cython"