OpenFASOC may be able to depends on klayout-pypi rather the klayout CLI

[proppy]

klayout-pypi expose a subset of klayout Python API (klayout.db, klayout.tl and klayout.rdb) packaged as a standalone python module distributed on https://pypi.org/project/klayout/.

Depending on it (even optionally) rather than the CLI, could simplify the process of install dependencies for OpenFASOC, we should explore if the subset of klayout functionality used by the generators can be provided by the bare python API.

[saicharan0112]

Thanks @proppy. That sounds interesting. Let me check.

[saicharan0112]

klayout is used inside openroad-flow-scripts under each generator (not sure how gdsfactory uses klayout) and in the Makefile, along with openroad/yosys/magic/netgen binaries klayout is also used specifically for merging gds files and macros. Not sure how good the idea is to replace that with a python package.

[proppy]

Not sure how good the idea is to replace that with a python package

I was suggesting this in case the python generators need to call klayout directly.