Any WinBoard bugs I missed?

[hgm]

I am preparing a new WinBoard/XBoard release (4.8.0), but I have been busy with other stuff for the past 6 months, and I am not sure if I have solved all issues that have come up since then.

If you noticed a bug these past months, could you remind me of it (even if you already reported it)?

[Ferdy]

Try to install SmarThink 1.7 or 1.6, this is a uci engine, winboard 4.7.3a refuses to install.
Message from error dialogue box.
"Failed to start first chess program polyglot -noini -ec "SmarThink_v160 ..."

[Roger Brown]

Try to install SmarThink 1.7 or 1.6, this is a uci engine, winboard 4.7.3a refuses to install.
Message from error dialogue box.
"Failed to start first chess program polyglot -noini -ec "SmarThink_v160 ..."

Hello Ferdinand,

That engine loads and plays here without an issue.

I am using 4.72 however.

Does it give an issue when loaded as a Winboard engine?

Later.

[Henk]

It would be nice if Winboard always reports illegal moves instead of waiting until time is up. Could be it already does that, but it doesn't show which move was illegal

[My engine Skipper/bug palace has problems with illegal moves. Probably because of reducing too much at shallow levels, so going directly into qSearch. So if king is in check there are illegal positions evaluated. King captures are allowed too.]

[Ferdy]

Try to install SmarThink 1.7 or 1.6, this is a uci engine, winboard 4.7.3a refuses to install.
Message from error dialogue box.
"Failed to start first chess program polyglot -noini -ec "SmarThink_v160 ..."

Hello Ferdinand,

That engine loads and plays here without an issue.

I am using 4.72 however.

Does it give an issue when loaded as a Winboard engine?

Later.

I can install the engine as wb but will not play after pressing new, it will crash, probably because of the tablebase missing message. In the debug I found,

Code: Select all

36522 <first &#58; EGTB files not found

Couple of words in the statement "not found" perhaps winboard does not like, also I did not set the right tablebase as I intend to not use tablebase on some specific test.

All right here in xboard engine protocol, engine-intf.html,

Code: Select all

In support of the -firstHost/-secondHost features, which allow a chess engine to be run on another machine using the rsh protocol, xboard recognizes error messages that are likely to come from rsh as fatal errors. The following messages are currently recognized:

unknown host
No remote directory
not found
No such file
can't alloc
Permission denied

Looks like we will request Sergei to modify his warning message.

[Roger Brown]

I can install the engine as wb but will not play after pressing new, it will crash, probably because of the tablebase missing message. In the debug I found,

Code: Select all

36522 <first &#58; EGTB files not found

Couple of words in the statement "not found" perhaps winboard does not like, also I did not set the right tablebase as I intend to not use tablebase on some specific test.

All right here in xboard engine protocol, engine-intf.html,

Code: Select all

In support of the -firstHost/-secondHost features, which allow a chess engine to be run on another machine using the rsh protocol, xboard recognizes error messages that are likely to come from rsh as fatal errors. The following messages are currently recognized:

unknown host
No remote directory
not found
No such file
can't alloc
Permission denied

Looks like we will request Sergei to modify his warning message.

Hello Ferdinand,

I simply left the EGTB string empty in the ini file and set book to no.

That assumes that the engine is set up as a Winboard engine.

Later.

[Ferdy]

I can install the engine as wb but will not play after pressing new, it will crash, probably because of the tablebase missing message. In the debug I found,

Code: Select all

36522 <first &#58; EGTB files not found

Couple of words in the statement "not found" perhaps winboard does not like, also I did not set the right tablebase as I intend to not use tablebase on some specific test.

All right here in xboard engine protocol, engine-intf.html,

Code: Select all

In support of the -firstHost/-secondHost features, which allow a chess engine to be run on another machine using the rsh protocol, xboard recognizes error messages that are likely to come from rsh as fatal errors. The following messages are currently recognized:

unknown host
No remote directory
not found
No such file
can't alloc
Permission denied

Looks like we will request Sergei to modify his warning message.

Hello Ferdinand,

I simply left the EGTB string empty in the ini file and set book to no.

That assumes that the engine is set up as a Winboard engine.

Later.

I missed that ini file, I only have values.txt and book.smt. So this is the solution.
Could you post your typical .ini file?

I wonder how winboard will install the engine as uci. Can you install it as uci in the wb version that you use?

[Henk]

I think any engine developer should create his own user interface too. Doesn't matter if it is crap, or unfriendly. For how can you debug your engine in a more user friendly way. Every engine is different and uses other debug routines which may be part of the user interface.

For the real games or non debugging sessions one could use interfaces like WinBoard.

[Ferdy]

I think any engine developer should create his own user interface too. Doesn't matter if it is crap, or unfriendly. For how can you debug your engine in a more user friendly way. Every engine is different and uses other debug routines which may be part of the user interface.

For the real games or non debugging sessions one could use interfaces like WinBoard.

Most often debugging an engine only requires printing to console, or printing to file, and some asserts in the code and others. Interfacing is different and requires a good understanding of the protocol. Arena and winboard even the cutechess-cli can also be used as debugging tools as it already produces a debug or log files.

[Henk]

I think any engine developer should create his own user interface too. Doesn't matter if it is crap, or unfriendly. For how can you debug your engine in a more user friendly way. Every engine is different and uses other debug routines which may be part of the user interface.

For the real games or non debugging sessions one could use interfaces like WinBoard.

Most often debugging an engine only requires printing to console, or printing to file, and some asserts in the code and others. Interfacing is different and requires a good understanding of the protocol. Arena and winboard even the cutechess-cli can also be used as debugging tools as it already produces a debug or log files.

If you are somewhere in the search and something is wrong there I sometimes want to see a chessboard which shows the position. I don't want to inspect all bits of a bit board.