  Perfect fluid spheres, both Newtonian and relativistic, have attracted
considerable attention as the first step in developing realistic stellar models
(or models for fluid planets). Whereas there have been some early hints on how
one might find general solutions to the perfect fluid constraint in the absence
of a specific equation of state, explicit and fully general solutions of the
perfect fluid constraint have only very recently been developed. In this
article we present a version of Lake's algorithm [Phys. Rev. D 67 (2003)
104015; gr-qc/0209104] wherein: (1) we re-cast the algorithm in terms of
variables with a clear physical meaning -- the average density and the locally
measured acceleration due to gravity, (2) we present explicit and fully general
formulae for the mass profile and pressure profile, and (3) we present an
explicit closed-form expression for the central pressure. Furthermore we can
then use the formalism to easily understand the pattern of inter-relationships
among many of the previously known exact solutions, and generate several new
exact solutions.
