The router began as a port of FreeRouting and has grown its own engine
(negotiated congestion, tree nets, exact checks, axis escapes), and
'freeroute' was one letter from the project it no longer follows. The
package, module and command are now rpmroute; the freeroute command stays
as an alias, and the RPMROUTE / RPMROUTE_ORACLE_JAVA variables fall back
to the old FREEROUTE names. Version 2026.10.07. Routing is unchanged: a
PCBench board routes to a byte-identical session either way.
A route may not leave a cell inside a wire keepout as a wire, nor reach
a pin there by one: it changes layer instead, and the via goes in the
pad. A pin whose every stub enters a keepout is reached by a via only.
A structure keepout named rule_area... (mckicad names KiCad rule areas
so) is checked for overlap only, as KiCad's DRC does, with the free ends
of each wire tested for their round caps.
A bounding-box spatial hash (broad phase) with exact IntBox-intersection
narrow phase, replacing the exact router's occupancy grid. Supports
insert/remove-owner and overlap/region queries, a clearance_conflict test
(strict 2-D overlap of the clearance-expanded box, so tiles exactly a
clearance apart are allowed), and has_violation for the whole-board DRC
check. Tiles are tagged routed vs static so pad-vs-pad spacing in the
source design is not counted as a routing violation.
rsp2k