How to use built in Autorouter in version 5?

[davidsrsb]

There are several copies of the original Freerouting on GitHub, which just seem to be unmaintained code dumps.
The one I linked seems to have had some maintenance and is not trying to drift off into a Freemium world.
I would love to see a re-port to anything but Java, as Java licensing is becoming odder and odder.

[NMNC]

In the comments he also appears to be making KiCad friendly changes to assist with multiple uses of the autorouter - this is commendable. It would be great to have the conversion to DSN invisible from within the KiCad suite without having to jump back and forward between software packages. As hermit suggested, maybe it would be good to pick a strong candidate, to assist with increased profile, compatibility etc

[eelik]

@davidsrsb

I would love to see a re-port to anything but Java, as Java licensing is becoming odder and odder.

Another strong reason to abandon Java is the continual problems with necessity of updating the virtual machine, incompatibilities between versions and possible security vulnerabilities. Even the necessity of the existence of the virtual machine is off-putting because nowadays you don’t necessarily need java except for one application. I try to keep away from it.

One problem which has been seen with FreeRouting is that the codebase is difficult, not easy to understand, enhance or port. It was a one man effort. Time will tell if it can be something else.

[Rene_Poschl]

@eelik

Another strong reason to abandon Java is the continual problems with necessity of updating the virtual machine, incompatibilities between versions and possible security vulnerabilities. Even the necessity of the existence of the virtual machine is off-putting because nowadays you don’t necessarily need java except for one application. I try to keep away from it.

Java still is one of the most used languages for a reason. It has its drawbacks but the major benefit is that it is portable over nearly all platforms. There is simply no other environment that offers the same. (Only alternative that comes to mind is a web applet based on for example java script. But even here you might use java on the server side.)

There is a reason java is always near the top of any “this are the best languages to know this year” posts.

[eelik]

This is clearly off-topic, but… java isn’t very popular on desktop. It’s amongst number one because it has become popular on server side and nowadays is the official language for Android. I think because of the latter it’s one of the best languages to know this year.

My personal opinion is that originally java had potential to become the number one on desktop, too, especially on Linux world, but Sun killed it immediately by not open sourcing the reference implementation from the beginning. When it did it was too late.