Help us make Cute Chess GUI better

[hgm]

In fact I already did it (Windows binary in http://hgm.nubati.net/WinBoard-Portable.zip ).

[hgm]

The screenshot is from the development version, where the dialog was already improved long time ago by using a listbox to select the engine from, rather than the combobox of 4.6.2. It was a bit annoying to have to open the combobox every time to select the next engine, especially if you had to select the from the middle of a long list. But at the time I made 4.6 I did not know how to make listboxes yet.

The Load Engine dialog now also uses a listbox. The listboxes also work much more natural when opening and closing engine groups.

The button I added just two hours ago. But I could not add it to 4.6.2, of course, as then it would no longer be 4.6.2!

[Edit] I realize now that it is actually possible to do this in 4.6.2 as well, by OK'ing the dialog after erasing the Tournament File field. This would obviously prevent WB from writing a tourney file, and could thus also not start match mode. But it would accept all the changes in the parameters you made, before it would discover the tourney file was missing, so next time you open the dialog you would see the same settings as when you left it.

The problem was that I forgot too often to specify a tourney file, (this was before WB proposed a name by itself), and then I was puzzled that the tourney did not start. So I added an extra check, that it refuses to pop down the dialog on OK when there are participants but no tourney file, but pops up an error message in stead requesting you to specify a tourney file.

But if you would press 'Cancel' after that, you would leave the dialog, and the settings you specified would already have been accepted on your previous OK attempt. So the trick is to clear the tourneyFile name, press OK and then Cancel, and you can return later to continue setting up the tourney! Better to have a single button for it, though!

[ilari]

Hello Ilari,

I tried to compile it from source as follows:

Code: Select all

qmake
make

all good so far. by the way, this requires quite a few packages, which might be worth mentionning in the README.md file (not trivial to all users). For Lubuntu 12.10, those were:

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g++
make
qt4-dev-tools

maybe qt4-dev-tools is too much to install. but i figured that qt4-qmake wouldn't be enough either (because of all the QT source files to be compiled with cutechess).

I always just install "build-essentials" and "qtcreator", and then I'll have everything I need to build Cute Chess on Ubuntu.

now in /projects/gui, I have an executable calles cutechess. but if I run it:

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lucas@lucas-desktop:~/Downloads/cutechess-cutechess-4f345b7/projects/gui$ ./cutechess 
./cutechess: error while loading shared libraries: libcutechess.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

I see that libcutechesscli.so.1 is in ../lib/, so I copied it into the gui directory, but still got the same error.

As you already noticed, the library path should be set with "export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=path_to_libcutechess". Alternatively you can make a static build with "qmake -config static && make".

PS: now that a lot of progress has been made with cutechess, it would be a good idea to make a compiled version. Compiling from source, especially with QT dependancies and figuring out how to load an external library (libcutechess.co) is not going to be trivial to most users, so if you provide a binary (even if it's just a 0.5 alpha version or whatever you decide to call it), it would allow a lot more people to try it out. Would that be possible ?

It would be possible, but at this point I only want to encourage those who know what they're doing to try the GUI. And I very much prefer that they compile from source, because then they'll be able to help me debug stuff more easily and they can update to the latest commit by just running "git pull && make distclean && qmake && make". Often a simple "git pull && make" will do.

Another reason not to release binaries yet is that people may not realize that it's bleeding edge, incomplete, try at your own risk, pre-alpha software. I think the right time for a binary release is when we've hit feature freeze and are just looking to polish a feature-complete product. Of course in the Linux world it's mainly up to the package maintainers to create the binary packages of Cute Chess.

[mike angel]

hey linux-forks

someone get success in creating a new cutechess.deb ? - than it would be nice when you would give me a link. last deb-file for cutechess i found in web is from 2011-11.

3 years ago i totally switched from win xp to linux. have tried of my own -xubuntu 12.04.2 - to get a working deb-file, but after one hour i quit.
must admit that i am smart enough to do this

so i am hopefull someone could help cause i really like to try that cutechess-gui

thanx mike

[mike angel]

i meant ... must admit that i am NOT smart enough to do this

[lucasart]

i meant ... must admit that i am NOT smart enough to do this

It is still in developpement stage, not even beta, so there will not be a debian package for it. If you want to install it, just download the source code and compile it. You'll find instructions earlier in this thread and/or in the readme.

PS: drop xubuntu, it's utter crap. If you want a *buntu that is lightweight, use lubuntu

[Tom Likens]

PS: drop xubuntu, it's utter crap. If you want a *buntu that is lightweight, use lubuntu

Or you could just adopt Linux Mint!

[Don]

i meant ... must admit that i am NOT smart enough to do this

There are probably people here who can do this for us. I don't have any experience with creating debian packages the hard way but there are tools that make this easy for the common cases. When I get a chance maybe I will take a look.

Don

[Don]

i meant ... must admit that i am NOT smart enough to do this

I did a quick look and there is a package called "checkinstall" which is dirt simple to use for creating a package. I think I actually used this years ago and it was very easy to use and does all the heavy lifting.

Here is from the checkinstall website:

A lot of people has asked me how can they remove from their boxes a program they compiled and installed from source. Some times -very few- the program's author adds an uninstall rule to their Makefile, but that's not usually the case. This is my primary reason to write CheckInstall. After you ./configure; make your program, CheckInstall will run make install (or whatever you tell it to run) and keep track of every file modified by this installation, using the excelent installwatch utility written by Pancrazio 'Ezio' de Mauro (p@demauro.net).

When make install is done, CheckInstall will create a Slackware, RPM or Debian compatible package and install it with Slackware's installpkg, "rpm -i" or Debian's "dpkg -i" as appropriate, so you can view it's contents with pkgtool ("rpm -ql" for RPM users or "dpkg -l" for Debian) or remove it with removepkg ("rpm -e"|"dpkg -r"). Aditionally, this script will leave you a copy of the installed package in the source directory so you can install it wherever you want, which is my second motivation: I don't have to compile the same software again and again every time I need to install it on another box .

[jshriver]

Allow the option to play on any ICS based server. Believe from just a client point of view all info is extracted from the style 12 string which ICC/H.G. Muller's/OICS all use.

Some nice GUI's out there but I tend to always revert back to xboard/winboard since I can specify icshost icsport.

-Josh