libstempo is a Python wrapper around the tempo2 pulsar timing package.

libstempo is installed most simply via conda as the tempo dependency is bundled in the conda recipe. Simply use

conda install -c conda-forge libstempo

To use libstempo with pip (or from source), tempo2 must be installed as a prerequisite. Currently there are two recommended methods to do this.

1. Install via script.

   curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/vallis/libstempo/master/install_tempo2.sh | sh

   This will install the tempo2 library in a local directory ($HOME/.local). This method is recommended if you do not need to use tempo2 directly but just need the installation for libstempo. You can also set the path to the install location. For example, to install in /usr/local, you could run:

   # need sudo if installing in a restricted location
   curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/vallis/libstempo/master/install_tempo2.sh | sudo sh -s /usr/local

2. Install via the instructions on the tempo2 homepage. If this method is used, the TEMPO2 environment variable will need to be set to use libstempo.

In either case, it is best practice to set the TEMPO2 environment variable so that it can be easily discovered by libstempo.

The libstempo package can be installed via pip:

pip install libstempo

To use astropy for units:

pip install libstempo[astropy]

If you have installed tempo2 in a location that is not in your path or not the default from install_tempo2.sh, you will need to install libstempo with an environment variable (e.g. if tempo2 is in /opt/local/bin)

TEMPO2_PREFIX=/opt/local pip install libstempo

or

export TEMPO2_PREFIX=/opt/local
pip install libstempo

See Demo Notebook 1 for basic usage and Demo Notebook 2 for simulation usage.