xboard questions

[matematiko]

Hello all,

As I mentioned in another section of this forum, I finally decided to give Linux another try. Therefore xboard is now my GUI instead of WinBoard.

As expected, there are/will be tons of questions.

What I did, I place the source files in /home/matematiko/downloads/xboard/ then I opened a terminal as root (Debians comes with one right under Aplications/Accesories), follow the instructions and installed xboard (I am not sure if I should I compiled or just installed it). Again, I am logged in as matematiko but run commands (make, make install, etc) as superuser. So, is it ok to assume that now xboard and its resources (sounds,bitmapts, configuration files and whatnot) exist in an obscure folder somewhere in the file system ? Is it ok to assume that I can safely delete the folder /home/matematiko/downloads/xboard/?

I am also assuming that I need to install polyglot for linux from source, is this correct?

In a different topic I read the help files (man and info) are not up to date, so forgive for this silly questions.

I guess this is it for now.

Thanks,

Darklord, check your PMs please.

Best regards,

[H.G.Muller]

Only the "make install" step requires execution as super-user.

After the install, you can indeed delete the source directory. The binary and all needed data files should have been placed in the standard places for such files on your Linux system. That means you can simply use "xboard" as a standard system command irrespective of the directory you are in, and it will know where to find its data files (e.g. the sounds and bitmaps).

Polyglot can be installed from source, but some Linux distributions (e.g. Ubuntu) do provide a quite recent Polyglot version as a binary package as well (so you can simply do "sudo apt-get install polyglot").

One caveat: most Linux distributions put software that is installed from source in a different location than that installed as binary package. E.g. your XBoard might go into /usr/local/games in stead of /usr/games, and I am not sure what happens if there is already a standard XBoard installed there. It will not be overwritten, and I don't think it will be automatically deleted. It could be that when both are present, it prefers to run the one that came with the distribution over the one you compiled yourself. (This will dependon your path settings.)

[matematiko]

Mr . H.G.M.,

Assuming I verify that xboard is not previously installed as a deb package, what are the consequences of having xboard and associated files placed in different folders via make install?. Does xboard becomes handicapped in any way? Or the only caveat is that files will be in different folders not mentioned in the documentation?

A different approach will be to install xboard as deb package then compile new versions as they come and just replace the binary. Is this a good or bad idea?

Regards,

[H.G.Muller]

It depends on how exactly you install. The only file location that is hard-coded in XBoard is the master settings file. But I think by default this goes in a different place when you install from source as when you install from a Debian package (/usr/local/etc instead of/etc ?). EachXBoard binary would automatically use its own master settings file.

Other locations are configurable; the user settings file is specified in the master setting file independently from where XBoard is (~/.xboardrc). This means all XBoards would share the same user settings file, unless you change that in the master settings file.

Other installed data files are sounds and texture pixmaps. They are also configured in the master settings file, and automatically adapted to where they were installed when you change the default place. But afterthe first run they are then saved in the user settings file, so if that is shared the specification in the master settings files you would install later will not have any effect anymore, as the user settings overrule them. But XBoard is pretty much a stand-alone binary, hardly using any external files,and the files it does use do not differ from version to version.

I hope this answers your question. I am no expert on Linux file conventions.

[matematiko]

Yes...as usual, elaborated and concise answers.

What I ended up doing was to install the debian package (4.4.3 I believe), then compile the new master from your git repository and substituted the xboard 4.4.3 binary with the new one. It is working fine, well.. I just started it once and played a game against Fairy-Max, now I have to figure out many other things, but is cool. Right now I am like a kid with two new toys (Debian and xboard)

Do you remember if 4.4.3 and the latest master have the master file location hard-coded the same? In a different note: The new xboard I compiled was 1.9 MB and the 4.4.3 is 1.5 MB, I think I am missing a step to clean the binary a little...any suggestions?

Have a nice weekend

[H.G.Muller]

4.4.3 is quite obsolete, and does not support settings files at all. So no conflicts possible there.

It could be that the people at Debian use different optimizer settings, or even a different compiler. That makes it hard to compare. The size difference sounds like more than could be explained by adding of features. But a more significant test would be to comparethe size with a 4.4.3 you compiled yourself with the default Makefile. I don't know enough of compiling under Linux to know how to alter the flags when using the Makefile. (make CCFLAGS=-Os ?)

[John Cheetham]

A different approach will be to install xboard as deb package then compile new versions as they come and just replace the binary. Is this a good or bad idea?

A bad idea. I think you will get trouble using this method.

If you are interested in the latest git version I would remove your 4.4.3 Debian package and compile from source which you have already been doing. If you have your git repo set up then to install the latest version you can just do git pull, make, make install (do make install as superuser). It doesn't matter that it goes into different folders to your installed packages.

You might also be interested in the packages on the Suse open build server. These are built regularly from the git sources and include packages for major distros including Debian. They can be installed alongside your existing versions. See http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/apersaud:/xboard.

[matematiko]

A bad idea. I think you will get trouble using this method.

If you are interested in the latest git version I would remove your 4.4.3 Debian package and compile from source which you have already been doing. If you have your git repo set up then to install the latest version you can just do git pull, make, make install (do make install as superuser). It doesn't matter that it goes into different folders to your installed packages.

You might also be interested in the packages on the Suse open build server. These are built regularly from the git sources and include packages for major distros including Debian. They can be installed alongside your existing versions. See http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/apersaud:/xboard.

Thank you very much...I was not comfortable with this and reverted my steps and end it up with installing as you suggest.

I will check up that link,

Thank you very much!!!!