bazel-orfs

Iterate on local OpenROAD source changes against a bazel-orfs flow by building the OpenROAD checkout binary and injecting it via OPENROAD_EXE (a bring-your-own / BYO loop), instead of encoding the diff as a base64 patch swapped into the archive_override. Use when developing or debugging an OpenROAD C++/TCL change that you need to exercise through an ORFS stage (cts, place, grt, route), when a long edit-build-run loop is taxing turnaround, or when a change "isn't taking effect" and you suspect a silently-rejected patch.

Pre-flight an hours-long ORFS _deps / make-extract stage run (grt, place, route, SAIF) by dumping the stage's effective variables and mentally dry-running the flow TCL to confirm the code path you are testing will actually execute. Use before committing to any long OpenROAD flow-stage run, especially when a SKIP_* flag, an *_EFFORT setting, or a setup/hold selector could silently route around what you intend to measure.

Investigate OpenROAD global-route repair_timing correctly — the grt "grind"/timeout, hold- and setup-buffer insertion. Covers why a skip-repair (fast) grt measures nothing about repair, why repair_timing must run inside global_route.tcl on the pre-GR ODB, and how to split the grind into setup vs hold before blaming either. Use when a grt stage times out or runs for hours, when a change is meant to affect repair_timing, or when reasoning about hold vs setup buffer insertion at global route.