Bug 990326

Summary:	xboard is configured to use fairymax by default, which is not available
Product:	[Fedora] Fedora	Reporter:	Jochen Wiedmann <jochen.wiedmann>
Component:	xboard	Assignee:	Christopher Aillon (sabbatical, not receiving bugmail) <caillon+fedoraproject>
Status:	CLOSED EOL	QA Contact:	Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity:	low	Docs Contact:
Priority:	unspecified
Version:	19	CC:	caillon+fedoraproject, h.g.muller, michael.finn.jorgensen
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Hardware:	Unspecified
OS:	Unspecified
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Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
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Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2015-02-17 16:27:33 UTC	Type:	Bug
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Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Embargoed:

Description Jochen Wiedmann 2013-07-30 23:23:16 UTC

Description of problem:

When I launch xboard, it comes preconfigured to use a chess engine called fairymax. Additional configurations seem to exist for (at least) Fruit, Crafty, 
and GNU Chess. Unfortunately, none of these seem to be available as RPM'S, the exception being GNU Chess.

IMO, either of the following should be desirable:

* xboard detects automatically, which engines are actually installed, and available (Suggestion: Use a directory /etc/xboard.d/ with config files that are installed as part of the engine, much like /etc/yum.repos.d)
* It should be sufficient to install the respective engine to use it. This is not the case with GNU Chess (error message indicates lack of a file /usr/share/gnuchess/gnuchess.ini)


Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):

XBoard 4.6.2 + fairymax

How reproducible:

Launch XBoard and play a move, or select another engine (Engine/Load new engine.../Select engine from list)

Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.

Actual results:

Error messages indicate, that the respective engine is unavailable or can't be used for other reasons.

Expected results:

If an engine is unavailable, it should be possible to install it.

Additional info:

Comment 1 H.G. Muller 2014-11-12 17:14:31 UTC

The new XBoard 4.8 has a feature aimed at addressing this problem, in a way similar to what is suggested. The directories that XBoard will search to detect the presence of engines are:

/usr/[local/]share/games/plugins/xboard/
/usr/[local/]share/games/plugins/uci/

(Because of the optional 'local', this is 4 directories in total.)
Note that directories were chosen that are not part of XBoard's installation tree, because this information is of general use: there are other GUIs (SCID, eboard) that support XBoard protocol, and there could be more in the future. So rather than associating this information with a particular GUI, hiding it for others, the idea is that it should be publicly available, grouped by protocol. Then any GUI can search the directories for the protocols it supports. (XBoard protocol is sometimes referred to as CECP, but I thought naming the directory xboard would be less confusing.)

Engines are supposed to drop a file ENGINENAME.eng there (e.g. fairymax.eng, gnuchess.eng). This file should contain as first 'magic' line "plugin spec 0.0", as second line the command needed to run the engine with the given protocol, and the third line a comma-separated line of what games it supports. (Currently only "chess" and "chess960" are defined.

The current XBoard implementation scans the directories at startup, and automatically adds any new engines to the user's list of installed engines in the XBoard settings file. So that the user can easily select them from the Load Engine menu dialog.

Comment 2 Fedora End Of Life 2015-01-09 19:11:06 UTC

This message is a notice that Fedora 19 is now at end of life. Fedora 
has stopped maintaining and issuing updates for Fedora 19. It is 
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Comment 3 Fedora End Of Life 2015-02-17 16:27:33 UTC

Fedora 19 changed to end-of-life (EOL) status on 2015-01-06. Fedora 19 is
no longer maintained, which means that it will not receive any further
security or bug fix updates. As a result we are closing this bug.

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