orekit-pip

This is an attempt at providing the Orekit Python Wrapper on PyPi.

Requirements

• A C++ compiler
  • For Windows, see below
  • For Linux, this is gcc and g++
• pip

Windows

• Install the Visual C++ build tools, version 14.0 or greater: https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/visual-cpp-build-tools/
• Additionally, install the two following modules as shown in the screenshot below:
  • Windows 11 SDK (or Windows 10 SDK if you're using Windows 10)
  • Windows Universal CRT SDK

Installation

This can take a couple of minutes because it single-threadingly compiles the Orekit C++ bindings.

• pip install git+https://github.com/GorgiAstro/orekit-pip.git

Local installation:

• git clone this repo
• pip install ..

Testing

python test/orekit-hello-world.py

Code generation

This doesn't need to be done by the normal user, it is mostly done by the package publishers when a new version of Orekit is available for example.

This does the following:

• Copies the Orekit JARs and some Python additions (from https://github.com/petrushy/orekit_python_artifacts) to the build/orekit folder
• Calls jcc to generate Orekit's C++ bindings in the build/_orekit folder
  • jcc also generates the setup.py script which configures the compilation of the Orekit C++ extension. This script will then be called by setuptools (together with the definitions in pyproject.toml) when running pip install

To do that:

• pip install -r requirements-generate.txt
• python generate.py
• Clean up the generated setup.py file with a git diff tool (this is still a manual step):
  • If the package_data and sources lines changed, accept these changes
  • Otherwise, discard all the other changes to this file: the include paths and the link and compile arguments are managed by jcc

Limitations

• The org.orekit.compiler.plugin.DefaultDataContextPlugin class is excluded, because it requires JAVA_HOME/../lib/tools.jar, which is not always available. But this plugin should not be needed by Orekit Python users: https://www.orekit.org/site-orekit-development/apidocs/org/orekit/compiler/plugin/DefaultDataContextPlugin.html