We are announcing the major release of openrouteservice with version 10.0.0 also known as Amalthea. This release focuses mostly on our technical foundation. It upgrades Java and Spring Boot, reduces the set of release artifacts to a fat jar and Docker images, and moves the slim Docker image to a hardened distroless base. Everyone who runs their own instance should read the notes below before upgrading.
About openrouteservice
openrouteservice is a free and open source routing engine built on OpenStreetMap data. It calculates routes for cars, heavy vehicles, bicycles, pedestrians and wheelchair users, and it also provides isochrones, distance matrices, elevation information and route optimization. HeiGIT operates a public API that anyone can use free of charge after registering for an API key, and the software can be self-hosted for custom data, custom profiles or higher request volumes. Development started in 2008 in the GIScience Research Group at Heidelberg University, and HeiGIT has maintained and developed openrouteservice since 2017.
What changes in version 10.0.0
For users hosting their own instance of openrouteservice, v10.0.0 brings an upgrade to Java 25 across build, CI and Docker images. Anyone who builds openrouteservice locally therefore needs a JDK 25 installation. Another important technical change is the update to Spring Boot 4, which is relevant for everyone who extends openrouteservice with their own code.
We also simplified the set of release artifacts. We dropped RPM packaging, which was obsolete, and we no longer provide a WAR file. The only release artifacts we provide are a fat jar and Docker images. The slim Docker image is now based on distroless Debian 13. A distroless image contains the application and its runtime dependencies without a shell or a package manager, which hardens the container and reduces its attack surface. It is made for cloud and Kubernetes environments. They are published as “v10.0.0-slim” and “latest-slim” on docker hub.
For more details and for all changes in the previous 9.x releases please see our changelog.
About the name
Amalthea is the third-closest moon of Jupiter and was the fifth moon of Jupiter to be discovered. It is also the fifth-largest moon of Jupiter, after the four Galilean moons. Edward Emerson Barnard discovered the moon on September 9, 1892, and named it after Amalthea of Greek mythology. It was the last natural satellite to be discovered by direct visual observation, as all later moons were found through photographic or digital imaging.
