tempo2 plugins driving you crazy? Try libstempo!

libstempo uses the tempo2 library to load a pulsar's tim/par files, and gives you easy Python access to the TOAs, the residuals, the timing-model parameters, the fit procedure, and more.

Requirements

Python 2.7 or 3.4
numpy
tempo2, of course

Important note

The master branch now refers to versions 2.X of libstempo. The API has changed substantially (for the better) from versions 1.X. If you need the older 1.X API, check out the libstempo1 branch, or install an older version with pip.

Installation

You can install the latest release with pip install libstempo. That's all you need. Sweet, huh?
If you have problems, it's probably because libstempo cannot find the tempo2 C headers and library. The installer will look in likely places, but you can also give it the tempo2 installation directory (i.e., the directory that contains include/tempo2.h and lib/libtempo2.a) by writing pip install libstempo --install-option="--with-tempo2=...".
Otherwise, grab the git repository and do python setup.py install --prefix=..., to install where you prefer. Again you can use --with-tempo2=... to point the installer to the tempo2 install location.
If import libstempo fails at runtime, complaining that it cannot find libtempo2.so, you need to set the environment variable LD_LIBRARY_PATH to the directory that contains libtempo2.so.
Since 2014/10/23, libstempo2 supports both the latest tempo2 release, and the latest CVS. (Or at least the changes that the maintainers are aware of. Open a ticket if you find a problem.)

Tutorials

In lieu of documentation, since showing is better than telling.