Myracle GUI

[F.Huber]

one thing I should definitely not do, however, is wait for isready after uciok when autodetecting - I'll change that in the next build

Yes, waiting for isready is ok for starting an already installed engine, but for installation uciok is enough to identify an engine as UCI.

BTW, when installing a MessChess engine, the engine window remains open - couldn't (or shouldn't) this window be closed (i.e. the engine killed) automatically so the user doesn't need to do it?

[mar]

BTW, when installing a MessChess engine, the engine window remains open - couldn't (or shouldn't) this window be closed (i.e. the engine killed) automatically so the user doesn't need to do it?

I don't observe this problem here, only that if you pick command first, it will start MessChess without arguments and the window stays for 10 seconds, fails to detect uci, then it restarts for another 10 seconds and fails to detect xboard and closes

what I propose instead is to fill the arguments first and then select the command and navigate to MessChess.exe, this works quite well for me now with the fixed version

I'll probably break the promise and prepare build 77 tonight, since nothing else was reported and this is quite annoying,
maybe it's not a big deal to publish the fixes ASAP...

[mar]

build 77 is up:
- fix: autodetect doesn't wait for isready nor send options, this fixes autodetection of MessChess engines

[F.Huber]

I don't observe this problem here

Ok, I found the difference:
in the meantime I'm installing MessChess engines with *.bat files, and with this method the engine window remains open -
when installing them manually the window in fact disappears automatically.
That's strange, I've no idea why that makes a difference!?

[F.Huber]

build 77 is up:
- fix: autodetect doesn't wait for isready nor send options, this fixes autodetection of MessChess engines

Thanks, now all MessChess engines are identified correctly as UCI.

As for not closing the window at installation:
Maybe that's just a peculiarity of the CreateProcessW command when starting *.bat or *.cmd files!?
But it's not a big problem, just on extra mouseclick.

[mar]

Ok, I found the difference:
in the meantime I'm installing MessChess engines with *.bat files, and with this method the engine window remains open -
when installing them manually the window in fact disappears automatically.
That's strange, I've no idea why that makes a difference!?

it's probably that CreateProcess calls cmd.exe which just spawns a child process and it doesn't close if the parent closes
I have a temporary workaround by always sending 'quit' when engine process terminates no matter what, but I don't like
that solution either: imagine the engine would freeze, spinning the CPU and ignoring quit, then such processes
would pile up utilizing memory and CPU

I think this is a serious problem and I should probably disable bat/cmd support altogether

[F.Huber]

it's probably that CreateProcess calls cmd.exe which just spawns a child process and it doesn't close if the parent closes

If you use the TaskManager you see a cmd console open while the engine is running, but it's closed when you close this tab in Myracle,
so I don't see any problems here.

I think this is a serious problem and I should probably disable bat/cmd support altogether

Well, if you really remove this, then not many users will use Myracle for MessChess engines, because many of them require quite a lot of arguments making the installation process quite complicated.
At least I would stop using MessChess with Myracle (or just not update anymore and stay with the current version) ...

[mar]

build 78 is up (to round it to three today):
- fix: send quit to engine process no matter what (should fix MessChess autodetect problem with batch files)
- tournament pre-start validation (check all participant engine paths for validity before starting a tournament)

[mar]

I'm getting some random GUI freeze reports from Gabor - so I'd like to ask here: is anybody else experiencing similar problems?

if so, I'd like to find a way to reproduce it because no matter what I do, it doesn't happen here. and I've played some 100k+
fast games for sure. thanks!

[adnoh]

I have not seen any GUI freezes and I have been using it very heavily for almost 4 weeks now.

Thanks for all the enhancements and fixes in those 4 weeks.

I have a Intel 12700K with 8P and 4E cores and utility software to lock all chess engines and Myracle to the P cores and I purposely chose concurrency of 6 and no ponder so the 6 "active" engines and Myracle are on the P cores. Plenty of RAM.

Another thing in my favour is my Chess PC is not my daily driver as I use a Mac for that so when it is running engine matches it is pretty well the only thing it is doing.

I suppose I am saying I chose fairly conservative settings and best case for workload on the PC.