User discussion of SCID wrote: > User discussion of SCID schreef op 11/26/2014 9:43 AM: > >> Honestly I would have preferred a single file /etc/chessengines ... >> > The problem with this is that, although potentially easier for GUIs, it > becomes > far harder for engines: they would all need some non-standard install script > that would edit the file. Placing files during make-install and removing > them > again on uninstall is standard in any packaging technology. That makes it > quite trivial to do for engine developers (or even packagers, as some > engines > are no longer developed).
In your previous post you talked about apt-get, so i believed that we were talking about distro packages. For example when you install scid on a debian machine with: sudo apt-get install scid the package manager suggest that you should install also some chess engine (stockfish, crafty, etc...) but when you launch scid you still need to add manually those engines, and that is bad. I think it should be a maintainer task to create the .eng file (the install script can be reused for all the chess engines in that distro without the need to modify the source code or makefiles) and i believe that a single conf file is a lot cleaner and not much more complicated. But now you talk about makefile and i'm a little bit confused: have you contacted for example stockfish authors? I don't believe they will ever agree to change their makefile to implement this protocol. > And the success of the system is very much > dependent on its embracement by engine authors too. So as usual the > GUI developers have to do the hard work... > >> However, is XBoard code portable? >> > Well, XBoard is written in C, not C++. And I hardly know anything about C++. > I put the C code that XBoard now uses in the public domain, at > http://www.talkchess.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=53674&topic_view=&start=15 > c is even more portable than c++ Your code can be a starting point, but obviously requires some improvements: - multi-platform (on Windows and Macs should compile and act like there is no engine installed) - should act like a library (just give to the GUI a list of the available engines; than it can decide if ask the user to confirm, maybe the engine was already installed by the user with custom options, etc). - how the GUI is informed that an engine was uninstalled? - What's "settingsFile" ? If it's the list of all the engines, including the one installed by the user, i could launch the GUI, keep it open when i install a couple of chess engine in background with apt-get, manually add another engine that is not present in the repository, and the engines will never be automagically discovered. - should be stable and secure (you forgot to avoid fscanf buffer overflow) Bye, Fulvio ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Download BIRT iHub F-Type - The Free Enterprise-Grade BIRT Server from Actuate! Instantly Supercharge Your Business Reports and Dashboards with Interactivity, Sharing, Native Excel Exports, App Integration & more Get technology previously reserved for billion-dollar corporations, FREE http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=157005751&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk _______________________________________________ Scid-users mailing list Scid-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/scid-users
