If you don't know what JPL's NAIF toolkit is, this module isn't for
you.

If you do know, and want to use NAIF from within Perl, then this is
for you.  At the moment,there are some problems. It's incomplete.  My
first list of routines to port was chosen simply by going through my
codes that use the NAIF toolkit and seeing what routines I used.  I've
since been slowly going through the cspice source and porting routines
as I go (I'm through the b's).  Eventually I'll port everything in
NAIF that makes sense to port, and some things that don't.  Some of
the routines have not yet been tested at all.  (Coming up with tests is
harder than writing the PDL::PP code to interface with the routines.)

If your spicelib.a and support.a aren't symlinked into /usr/local/lib
with proper Unix library names, so that -L/usr/local/lib -lspicelib
-lsupport work, you might need to edit Makefile.PL until it works for
you.  You can set NAIF_INCLUDE in your environment to the path of the
cspice include directory (if it isn't
/usr/local/naif/C/cspice/include) and similarly NAIF_LIB could be used
to point somewhere other than /usr/local/lib).

Note to CPAN testers: even if you install the NAIF toolkit (something
I don't recommend unless you're actually going to use it, because the
NAIF developers don't use autoconf or make), you won't be able to test
this at the moment.  I have a test.pl, and it works for me, but it
depends on a bunch of kernels that I have installed locally but are
too big to include in the distribution.  Eventually I'll produce some
cut down kernels for testing purposes that can be included in the
distribution.

Paul Schinder
schinder@leprss.gsfc.nasa.gov
