🌌 zfitsio

A Modern Zig Wrapper for CFITSIO

Seamlessly work with astronomical FITS files in your Zig applications

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🚧 Development Status: This project is currently in alpha stage. The API is subject to change, and documentation is under active development. While functional, it's not yet recommended for production use.

✨ Features

• 📦 Lightweight wrapper around CFITSIO
• 🚀 Native Zig interface for FITS file operations
• 🛠️ Simple and intuitive API design
• 🔄 Support for reading and manipulating FITS data
• 🎯 Zero-cost abstractions where possible

🎯 Use Cases

• Astronomical data processing
• Scientific imaging applications
• FITS file manipulation and analysis
• Data pipeline integration
• Research and educational projects

📦 Installation

Prerequisites

• Zig: Version 0.13.0 or later
• C Compiler: For CFITSIO compilation
• Git: For package fetching

Quick Start

1. Add zfitsio to your project:

zig fetch --save git+https://github.com/chrischtel/zfitsio#master

2. Update your build.zig:

const zfitsio_dep = b.dependency("zfitsio", .{
    .target = target,
    .optimize = optimize,
});

const zfitsio_artifact = zfitsio_dep.artifact("zfitsio");

exe.root_module.addImport("zfitsio", zfitsio_dep.module("zfitsio"));
exe.linkLibC();
exe.linkLibrary(zfitsio_artifact);

🖥️ Platform Support

Platform	Status	Notes
Windows	✅ Supported	Works with built-in build process
Linux	🚧 In Progress	Testing on Debian-based systems
macOS	🚧 In Progress	Both Intel and Apple Silicon

📚 Basic Usage

const std = @import("std");
const zfitsio = @import("zfitsio");

pub fn main() !void {
    // Open a FITS file
    var fits = try zfitsio.FitsFile.open("example.fits", .read);
    defer fits.close();

    // Read header information
    const header = try fits.readHeader();
    
    // More examples coming soon...
}

🗺️ Roadmap

• Complete cross-platform support
• Comprehensive documentation
• Extended example collection
• Performance optimizations
• Additional FITS operations support
• Testing framework
• CI/CD pipeline

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Here's how you can help:

• Report bugs and issues
• Submit pull requests
• Improve documentation
• Share usage examples
• Test on different platforms

📄 License

This project is licensed under the Apache 2.0 License - see the LICENSE file for details.

🙏 Acknowledgments

• CFITSIO development team
• Zig community
• All contributors

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