H.G. Muller wrote:
> I don't completely get how you would want to obtain the engine_handle.
typedef int engine_handle;
int SOMEPREFIX_getEngines(engine_handle*, int max_handles, time_t
after_timestamp);
and use it like this:
engine_handle engines[100];
int n_engines = SOMEPREFIX_getEngines(engines, sizeof engines / sizeof
engine_handle, 0);
// if (n_engines < 0) something went wrong, report an error or simply
ignore autoinstall?
for (int i = 0; i < n_engines; i++) {
InstallNewEngine(SOMEPREFIX_getExecutable(engines[i]), etc..);
}
> Sure, Stockfish has no interest per se. But the issue that did seem of
> relevance was your remark that it "would be a nightmare to maintain
> the proposed auto-install system". Because if it is a nightmare for
> Stockfish, I don't see what makes Stockfish so different from any
> other engine that offers a Linux version, that it would not be a
> nightmare to anyone. And we definitely would not want that.
Let's assume that you send a patch for stockfish that implement the
protocol.
They accept your patch and it works fine on the major distributions
(debian, ubuntu, fedora, arch, etc...).
Than one day a chinese user decide that he want to try the strongest
chess engine (that's why stockfish is different from less known engines)
on his supercomputer (no intel arch, chinese charset, no standard linux
directory tree) and the make install fails because of your patch.
He contact stockfish authors and they do not even know what he is
talking about, but fortunately they track down the patch and contact
you: how do you solve the bug?
Will you say to him: you have a very unusual environment, bare with it?
You'll start messing around with the makefile to exclude all the
possible peculiar systems?
I do not think that's the ideal solution, especially if you consider
that we are not even talking about a stockfish feature.
We are talking about providing the list of chess engines installed in a
linux distribution, and that's why in my opinion it should be maintained
by the distro and not by chess engine developers.
(the chinese user will never encounter the problem because if he
installed stockfish from a package it must work, otherwise the packager
would have noticed; and if he installed stockfish from source the
protocol is not even there).
Bye,
Fulvio
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