More about Find_Orb (what it does, how to use it, pre-built Windows executables) at
https://www.projectpluto.com/find_orb.htm
This project includes code for building Linux, Windows, and BSD
(and possibly OS/X) versions of the interactive Find_Orb orbit
determination software, the non-interactive fo software, and
the fo_serve.cgi program that underlies the
on-line Find_Orb service.
(For a lot of purposes, the on-line service or pre-built .EXEs
may be all you really need.)
Right now, only the Linux and BSD versions can be built with what's posted here. (You can probably build for OS/X, too, but I've not heard any reports on that recently.) I've not gotten around to documenting the Windows build process yet; I just provide the aforementioned pre-built EXEs. Sadly, the Windows builds require the Microsoft compiler, due to an unfortunate early choice to use MFC.
You can click here for directions on building Find_Orb from the source in this repository..
As is described at the above link, this project depends on three of my other projects :
jpl_eph(code to read JPL ephemerides)sat_code(code for Earth-orbiting satellite ephemerides)lunar(basic astronomical ephemeris/time functions)
At some point, I'll probably document the build procedure for Windows, but it does appear that most Windows users just want pre-built executables.
In the following, the installation instructions on a Linux system are given.
Two packages are required to build find_orb: ncurses and libcurl. On a Debian-based system, they can be installed with the following command:
$ sudo apt install libncurses-dev
$ sudo apt install libcurl4-openssl-dev
The source code of find_orb and the dependencies should be saved in the same directory, named <DOWNLOAD_DIR>. The following commands will download the source code of find_orb and the dependencies:
$ cd <DOWNLOAD_DIR>
$ git clone <github-path-to/Bill-Gray/find_orb>
$ git clone <github-path-to/Bill-Gray/jpl_eph>
$ git clone <github-path-to/Bill-Gray/sat_code>
$ git clone <github-path-to/Bill-Gray/lunar>
$ git clone <github-path-to/Bill-Gray/miscell>
There is a shell script INSTALL.sh in the find_orb directory that builds find_orb and the dependencies.
Executing permissions must be given to the script:
$ cd <DOWNLOAD_DIR>/find_orb
$ chmod +x INSTALL.sh
The script can be executed with the following command:
$ sudo ./INSTALL.sh -d <DOWNLOAD_DIR>
The -d option is mandatory and specifies the directory where the dependencies are located.
Note that <DOWNLOAD_DIR> is .. (i.e., the parent directory of find_orb).