Some days ago we released the latest stable Open Source Routing Machine release: version 5.5. In addition to some neat routing engine features I want to highlight two often overlooked improvements in usability.

Docker Images

We now publish pre-build Docker images for the latest releases to Docker Hub. Setting up your own routing engine and running the HTTP API is now as easy as:

wget http://download.geofabrik.de/europe/monaco-latest.osm.pbf

docker run -t -v $(pwd):/data osrm/osrm-backend:v5.5.2 osrm-extract -p /opt/car.lua /data/monaco-latest.osm.pbf
docker run -t -v $(pwd):/data osrm/osrm-backend:v5.5.2 osrm-contract /data/monaco-latest.osrm
docker run -t -i -p 5000:5000 -v $(pwd):/data osrm/osrm-backend:v5.5.2 osrm-routed /data/monaco-latest.osrm

curl 'http://localhost:5000/route/v1/driving/7.436828612,43.739228054975506;7.417058944702148,43.73284046244549?steps=true'

Hooking up the user-facing frontend is a npm install away.

Rendered API Documentation

We now host up-to-date documentation for both the routing engine’s HTTP API as well as for the C++ libosrm library doing the heavy-lifting. This is in addition to the existing documentation for the NodeJS wrapper node-osrm.

Check out our re-worked Landing Page and Wiki:

• https://github.com/Project-OSRM/osrm-backend/wiki
• https://github.com/Project-OSRM/osrm-backend#open-source-routing-machine

Hopefully this makes it easier to set up OSRM and experiment with OpenStreetMap-based routing. As always I’m more than glad for feedback!