Winboard Forum

Hello everybody!

I am trying to understand why xboard says that my engine doesn't support Capablanca variant.

Here is my script to start xboard:

Code: Select all

#!/bin/sh

SCRIPT=`realpath $0`
SCRIPTPATH=`dirname $SCRIPT`
echo $SCRIPTPATH

LC_ALL=C xboard -size average -debug -debugfile xboard.debug -timeControl 5:00 \
-cp \
-fcp $SCRIPTPATH/durandal64 \
-fd $SCRIPTPATH -fUCI /variant=capablanca

Here is what the engine answers to uci command:

Code: Select all

[roland@localhost durandal-2301311206]$ ./durandal64
uci
id name Durandal 0.1.3
id author Roland Chastain
option name UCI_Chess960 type check default false
option name UCI_Capablanca type check default false
option name UCI_Caparandom type check default false
option name UCI_Gothic type check default false
option name UCI_Variant type combo default chess var capablanca var caparandom var chess var fischerandom var gothic
uciok

Would someone have an idea?

It's xboard 4.9.1.

P.-S. I also tried with -fUCCI but in that case xboard crashes.

Which UCI adapter are you using? If it is Polyglot, then it would of course only support Chess and Chess960.

Thank you for your answer, and for the information.

I don't know which adapter I am using. Is it possible to choose the adapter?

Yes, this is configurable. XBoard has a persistent string option -adapterCommand, the value of which will be used as the command to launch the engine when the -fUCI option is used. Any word preceded by a % sign in that string will be taken as the name of a WinBoard option, and be replaced by the value of that option before the string is executed as a command.

So when you have

-adapterCommand {uci2wb "%fcp" "%fd"}

and

-fcp stockfish -fd . -fUCI

to define the engine and the directory from which it should run, it will use the command

uci2wb "stockfish" "."

to launch the UCI2WB adapter mediating for stockfish.

Of course this only works when you actually have the uci2wb installed in a directory in the system search path. I believe the settings of persistent options are kept in the file .xboardrc in your home directory; you could check it there.

Yes it works. Thanks!

For information, there was this line in .xboardrc:

Code: Select all

-adapterCommand 'polyglot -noini -ec "%fcp" -ed "%fd" -uci NalimovCache=%defaultCacheSizeEGTB -pg ShowTbHits=true'

I simply replaced with your suggestion, and compiled and installed uci2wb. And now I can play Capablanca against my engine. Great!