Windows compilers - general question

[Norbert Raimund Leisner]

Hello together,

what is in your opinion a suitable compiler for the source code of Galjoen Chess Engine ~ http://www.goudengaljoen.be/ , e.g.
MinGW http://www.mingw.org/ respectively Cygwin https://www.cygwin.com/ ?

It seems that GCC https://gcc.gnu.org/ is not working - Dann Corbit tried it out.

I use Windows 7 OS (32-bit and 64-bit) at the moment.

Best wishes,
Norbert

[jdart]

The cygwin compiler is gcc, just with a linux-like C library that interfaces to Windows. MingW is also gcc but supports Windows system calls. You probably want cygwin, because as far as I can tell this engine was not designed as a Windows app. But if gcc linux did not work probably cygwin won't either.

The newly released gcc 5.0 has better support for C++ 11 but may not be available in a cygwin distribution yet.

You could try the free MSVC edition (http://www.visualstudio.com/).

--Jon

[velmarin]

You could try the free MSVC edition (http://www.visualstudio.com/).

--Jon

Impossible, not microsoft, nor Intel nor LLVM, too many errors for a short life.

[Dann Corbit]

Hello together,

what is in your opinion a suitable compiler for the source code of Galjoen Chess Engine ~ http://www.goudengaljoen.be/ , e.g.
MinGW http://www.mingw.org/ respectively Cygwin https://www.cygwin.com/ ?

It seems that GCC https://gcc.gnu.org/ is not working - Dann Corbit tried it out.

I use Windows 7 OS (32-bit and 64-bit) at the moment.

Best wishes,
Norbert

Mingw GCC works fine, but not on that source code base.
There is enough stuff that is highly Posix specific that it can't compile with mingw.
A cross compiler might work.
Cygwin might work.
I just don't want to spend the effort to try to port it.
Another example of a program that Mingw won't compile properly is the current GNU Chess (FSF version).

It often seems to me that people aim to make programs non-portable. It is not difficult to write portable code, especially with a console driven text based engine.

I don't particularly like cygwin because the binaries are not quite as fast and the license for using it is ambiguous to me.
I much prefer mingw, and if mingw can't compile it then it is likely to be poorly written anyway. Sometimes, the fixes are trivial, and a few quick edits will fix a source code base.

I have plenty to do such that I don't need to spend dozens of hours trying to iron the wrinkles out of other people's non-portable code.

If there was something interesting about the program that I wanted to investigate I might do it anyway. But not in general.

[Sven]

Hello together,

what is in your opinion a suitable compiler for the source code of Galjoen Chess Engine ~ http://www.goudengaljoen.be/ , e.g.
MinGW http://www.mingw.org/ respectively Cygwin https://www.cygwin.com/ ?

It seems that GCC https://gcc.gnu.org/ is not working - Dann Corbit tried it out.

I use Windows 7 OS (32-bit and 64-bit) at the moment.

Best wishes,
Norbert

Hi Norbert,

you could try the Intel compiler v15.0 (30 days trial?), it is possible that it supports more C++11 features than MinGW, CygWin, and VS2013.

In any case, porting a C++11 program to Windows that has been written for Linux with a recent gcc could be a non-trivial task. You could ask the author whether he is interested in porting his engine to a current popular Windows compiler. Or you wait until he publishes Windows binaries.

Sven

[Jim Ablett]

The engine part of the program can be compiled successfully if you use a Mingw version with posix support >
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw-w ... lds/4.9.2/

Unfortunately it crashes on 'go' command. A 'divide by zero' bug I think.

Here's the engine src of Galjoen 0.24 ready to compile for anyone interested (buggy win32 binary included) > http://tinyurl.com/osbg7jd

Jim.

[Werner Taelemans]

A possible work around: first change the time control, before the go-command.

I can repeat the crash like this:

Code: Select all

xboard
protover 2
feature myname="Galjoen_v0.25" variants="normal" usermove=1 time=0 sigint=0 sigterm=0 ping=1 analyze=1 colors=0 san=1 setboard=1 nps=0 draw=0 debug=1 done=1
new
force
go
Drijvendekomma-berekeningsfout

but adding the level-command gives:

Code: Select all

xboard
protover 2
feature myname="Galjoen_v0.25" variants="normal" usermove=1 time=0 sigint=0 sigterm=0 ping=1 analyze=1 colors=0 san=1 setboard=1 nps=0 draw=0 debug=1 done=1
level 40 1 0
new
force
go
move Nc3
^C

If someone can confirm that this solves the problem, I'll put a new version on my website. If it doesn't solve the problem, can anybody post a debug file from winboard?
That would be helpful.

[Jim Ablett]

Still crashes here but includes error report which may help you >

xboard
protover 2
feature myname="Galjoen_v0.24" variants="normal" usermove=1 time=0 sigint=0 sigt
erm=0 ping=1 analyze=1 colors=0 san=1 setboard=1 nps=0 draw=0 debug=1 done=1
level 40 1 0
new
force
go
terminate called after throwing an instance of 'std::runtime_error'
what(): TTmove::TTmove(const Move&) impossible EP move
from=0 to=125

Jim.

[Werner Taelemans]

Thanks. I'll take a look at this one.

[Werner Taelemans]

I have a new version (0.26) available. I added a map with a 32bit exe crosscompiled on Ubuntu 14.04 with MinGW and a screenshot showing Galjoen running on Winboard under Wine.
The problem is not completely solved yet, since this exe runs ten times slower than it should.