Removal of the OpenROAD plugin?

[maliberty]

What does "This release removes the built-in OpenROAD plugin" mean for OpenROAD?

[nmoroze]

I don't think there will be any impact. This plugin checked that scripts were using OpenROAD commands correctly. It has no relation to the actual use of tclint on the OpenROAD codebase itself.

I removed it since the plugin was fairly brittle (it relied on parsing help strings), wasn't well tested, and was a bit difficult to use. Overhauling the plugin system would have required a bunch of updates to keep it around, so removing seemed easiest. I think the overall impact is also minimal since AFAIK there are no existing users of the plugin (but please let me know if I'm wrong about this!) I think SiliconCompiler used it previously but that bit of the CI was commented out a while ago.

The OpenROAD command checking can be revived if there's interest. I've been thinking about at least putting the relevant code up in a separate repo where it could eventually be dusted off.