[bug #27687] [FR] fallback to GNU Chess if Fairymax not found

[Ben Asselstine-2]

URL:
  <http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?27687>

                 Summary: [FR] fallback to GNU Chess if Fairymax not found
                 Project: XBoard
            Submitted by: gvy
            Submitted on: Tue 13 Oct 2009 10:17:53 AM GMT
                Category: None
                Severity: 3 - Normal
              Item Group: None
                  Status: None
                 Privacy: Public
             Assigned to: None
             Open/Closed: Open
         Discussion Lock: Any

    _______________________________________________________

Details:

Seems reasonable that the previous behaviour be preserved -- that is, that
xboard works in presence of chess binary.  Could you please implement the
fallback?  I could try and come up with one but my C skills are rather
lacking/forgotten.

TIA :)




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[Ben Asselstine-2]

Follow-up Comment #1, bug #27687 (project xboard):

There are just to many different Chess engines nowadays to make that
feasible. GNU Chess is one of the least likely that people would want to use.
So should we make it try Phalanx or Crafty? Or perhaps Polyglot+Fruit or
Polyglot+Glaurung?

The problem is that XBoard is also useful without engine (for ICS play), and
thus no dependency will be listed for the package manager. So it will be run
by people that have no engine at all.

The only way I see that would solve this once and for all would be to
actually bundle XBoard with an engine. And in that case I would prefer to
bundle it with Fairy-Max, because it is tiny.

B.t.w., I think tht the old behavior _is_ preserved. XBoard does work in the
presence of a Chess binary. You just have to install the proper binary.

H.G. Muller

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[Ben Asselstine-2]

Follow-up Comment #2, bug #27687 (project xboard):

> You just have to install the proper binary.
...and read FAQ.html :) (which I did)

OK, I'll try to invent something package-wise; this bug is thus invalid
(though programmatic fallback still looks way better to me than listing
predictable things in FAQ and having people going through that instead of
software just working).

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[Ben Asselstine-2]

Follow-up Comment #3, bug #27687 (project xboard):

Well, "software just working" is not an option for softare that has the
purpose of suporting other software (such as a GUI for an engine). The main
culprit here is the package management system, which fails to recognize a
dependency between XBoard and its default engine, so that the latter is not
automatically installed when you install XBoard.

Now in general I am strongly in favor of solving problems where they are,
rather than trying to work around them in a cumbersome way (and thereby
leaving the true problem and reducing the probability that it will ever be
solved).

Now in this particular case I guess that the package maintainers also have a
pont, namely that XBoard also has enough functionality (ICS client, PGN
viewer) to make a dependency on an engine undesirable. So perhaps we should
bow to this. But then it is illogical to make running an engine the default
mode, and we should really make -ics mode the default, connecting people
immediately to FICS if they run XBoard without arguments. (That is probably
better than -ncp mode.)

H.G.Muller

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[Ben Asselstine-2]

Follow-up Comment #4, bug #27687 (project xboard):

It might be an option for a few well-known (and expected) cases; that way, if
some supported engine *is* installed, the user gets it since presumably the
engine was installed on purpose; and if not, the default route should really
be going -ics way and not popping up a message to be googled down in FAQ.

If there are a few engines, using the first one found seems logical (guess
the list might start with fairymax as per your explanation).

I can propotype in shell what I mean, would it make a better bugreport then?

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[Ben Asselstine-2]

Follow-up Comment #5, bug #27687 (project xboard):

No, that is not needed. What you propose comes over quite well. The matter is
just if we want it or not. You should realize that XBoard currently is kind of
a backward version of WinBoard, and that we are working to port WinBoard
functionality to XBoard. So naturally we don't want XBoard to go off in its
own direction.

WinBoard solves the engine problem through a startup menu, where a
configuration file contins a list of engines, from which the user can select
one from a combo box.

H.G. Muller


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[Ben Asselstine-2]

Follow-up Comment #6, bug #27687 (project xboard):

I think this could be improved a lot within the package management systems.
For instance, in ubuntu, I notice the xboard package does this:

Recommends: xfonts-75dpi | xfonts-100dpi
Suggests: gnuchess | phalanx, x-terminal-emulator

Unfortunately it seems the "suggests" line doesn't cause any suggestion to
actually be given to the user in most cases, or at least not where he will see
it.  But one could move the chess engines to "recommends", and then I think
they would get installed by default.

I think if they are separated by "|" the user will get prompted as to which
one(s) he wants instead of just getting them all.  I haven't checked that,
though.

Another idea is to have the chess engine packages do something like
"Provides: xboard-chess-engine" and have the xboard package require that.
Then I'm pretty sure apt will make the user choose at least one to install.

The provides/requires thing should work with RPM too, I think.

I'm far from an expert on these packaging technologies, though, so the above
are just ideas to try, not something I'm sure will work out well.



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[Ben Asselstine-2]

Follow-up Comment #7, bug #27687 (project xboard):

> and have the xboard package require that
Local engine isn't actually *required*, as I was corrected in my age-old
assumptions.  Otherwise, yes, at least on RPM side you're right.

But that's quite another side of the story, I was wondering whether it's
really neccessary to route people through error messages and FAQ, or just find
something to use (presenting the user with the choice of *locally existing*
engines is ok, maybe if only one item left to choose it could be
auto-chosen).

PS: wrt forking, I understand that it's pretty undesirable, of course.
Thanks!

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[Ben Asselstine-2]

Follow-up Comment #8, bug #27687 (project xboard):

My long-term vision to solve this issue is to add a menu-dialog similar to
the WinBoard startup dialog to both the WinBoard and XBoard regular menus. So
that it is possible to use -ncp mode as default at startup, and select the
engine(s) or ICS later. There already is an item "ICS Clent" in the mode menu,
but it acts only as an indicator that you that you are in ICS mode, and is
grayed out when you are not. It could be made active in any mode, and when you
click it pop up a dialog to select an -icshost and -icshelper, and switch to
ICS mode.

The engine and ICS selection dialogs wuld present you with a choice that was
pre-programmed through the -chessPrograms option, similar to the
-firstChessPrograms and -secondChessPrograms options that currently exist in
WinBoard. (I see no reason for the choices offered for first and second engine
to be different, though.) The value of this string option would of course be
saved in an ini file.

It should also be possible to type your own engine command rather than just
click one of the pre-programmed choices (as is currently the case in the
WinBoard startup dialog), but in addition it should then be able to tick a
checkbox that would add the selected engine at the front of the -chessPrograms
string (and delete it in its original place if it already occurred, so that it
is easy to shuffle an existing list). And perhaps a button should be provided
to delete the currently selected engine from the list. Of course there should
be a browse button as well, so that people would not actually have to type the
name of the engine executable, but can navigate to it. Of course all that
functionality could be added to the WinBoard startup dialog while it is still
only a startup dialog as well, and perhaps this should be the firt step.

H.G. Muller

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[Ben Asselstine-2]

Update of bug #27687 (project xboard):

                  Status:                    None => Postponed              


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