---
parent: Developers
title: Build segment files
---

Build your own segments files
=============================

BRouter uses its own data format (`.rd5` files), split in tiles of 5 x 5
in latitude and longitude. You can download the official segment files (weekly
built) from [brouter.de](http://brouter.de/brouter/segments4/) but you can
also build them yourself from an OSM dump (e.g. planet or [GeoFabrik
extract](https://download.geofabrik.de/))


## Build the pbfparser

First, there are two file formats available to download OSM data: `bzip`-ed
XML files (very large) and `.pbf`
([Protobuf](https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf) format) which is much
more efficient. If you want to use the latter one, you will have to build the
`pbfparser` (located in `misc/pbfparser` first):

* Download [the latest
    version](https://github.com/openstreetmap/osmosis/releases)
    of [Osmosis](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Osmosis) and unzip it
    somewhere.
* Copy the `lib/default/protobuf-java-*.jar` and
    `lib/default/osmosis-osm-binary-*.jar` files from the unzipped Osmosis
    archive to `misc/pbfparser/protobuf.jar` and `misc/pbfparser/osmosis.jar`.
* Build BRouter and copy
    `brouter-server/build/libs/brouter-*-all.jar` to
    `misc/pbfparser/brouter.jar`.
* You can build the `pbfparser` using, in the `misc/pbfparser/`
    folder,

```
javac -d . -cp "brouter.jar:protobuf.jar:osmosis.jar" *.java
```

* Finally, you can build a `jar` file from these files using

```
jar cf pbfparser.jar btools/**/*.class
```

_Note:_ If the `jar` file is not properly created, everything else will seem
to work normally but there will not be any data extracted from the OSM data
dump. You can check what is actually inside the built `jar` file using
`jar tf pbfparser.jar`.


## Run the map creation script

If you want to have elevation information in the generated segments files, you
should download the required [SRTM
files](https://cgiarcsi.community/data/srtm-90m-digital-elevation-database-v4-1/)
and set the `SRTM_PATH` variable when running the `process_pbf_planet.sh`
script.

Any flavor of the 90m SRTM database should be working, but the one used by the
official BRouter segments files are the ones provided by
[CGIAR](https://cgiarcsi.community/data/srtm-90m-digital-elevation-database-v4-1/).
If you are working with rather small geographical extracts, you can download
tiles manually using [this
interface](http://srtm.csi.cgiar.org/SELECTION/inputCoord.asp) (use the
"ArcInfo ASCII" format), instead of having to ask for an access for bulk
download of data. There is no need to unzip the downloaded files, the
`process_pbf_planet.sh` script expects a folder with all the ZIP files inside
and will manage it.

Note that if you don't have the SRTM data available, the segments files will
still be generated without any issue (but they will miss the elevation data).
If you are not sure which SRTM files you have to download, you can run the
script once and it will log all the SRTM files it is looking for.

You can now run the `misc/scripts/mapcreation/process_pbf_planet.sh` script to
build the segments. Have a look at the variables defined at the beginning of
the files and overwrite them according to your needs. By default, the script
will download the latest full planet dump from
[planet.osm.org](https://planet.osm.org/). You can also download a
geographical extract provided by [Geofabrik](https://download.geofabrik.de/)
and set the `PLANET_FILE` variable to point to it.

_Note:_ It is possible that you encounter an error complaining about not being
able to run `bash^M` on Linux/Mac OS. You can fix this one by running
`sed -i -e 's/\r$//' process_pbf_planet.sh`.
