UCI engines for OS X

[Tord Romstad]

Hi all,

I would like to have a complete list of UCI engines running in Mac OS X, including open source engines which are known to compile without problems. So far, I know the following:

Diablo
Fruit
Glaurung
Gothmog
Hiarcs
Homer
Ruffian
Shredder
Sjeng

Have I forgotten any?

Tord

[Dann Corbit]

Pepito comes with source code.
I don't know what is needed to make it run on OS/X, but I imagine it should run straight out of the box.

[Dann Corbit]

http://www.geocities.com/pag_sax/xadreco/index-en.html

[Dann Corbit]

Cassandre comes with source

[Dann Corbit]

SlowChess is a UCI engine that comes with source (but I do not remember if the source code version is also UCI).

That should be a pretty strong one.

Cheops is UCI, but not much of a sparring partner.

[Daniel Mehrmann]

Hi all,

I would like to have a complete list of UCI engines running in Mac OS X, including open source engines which are known to compile without problems. So far, I know the following:

Diablo
Fruit
Glaurung
Gothmog
Hiarcs
Homer
Ruffian
Shredder
Sjeng

Have I forgotten any?

Tord

Hi Tord,

Homer for MAC OSX will be come the next days (sure this week).
This version should run on any 10.x version.

Best,
Daniel

[Tord Romstad]

Thanks to both of you for your replies!

I don't think SlowChess would work without some non-trivial changes to the source code, but the other programs are probably worth a try. I will also download Homer as soon as it is available.

My reason for asking is that I want to check that all the available engines work correctly in my GUI (so far I have tried with Diablo, Fruit, Glaurung, Gothmog, Hiarcs and Shredder, which all seem to work).

Yesterday I was informed that my GUI doesn't work at all on Macs which don't have OpenMCL 1.0 installed (which excludes something like 99.999% of all Macs on the planet). I think I shall be able to solve this problem quite easily, but I find it rather alarming that nobody has even told me about it until yesterday. My program must be even less popular than I thought.

Tord

[Tord Romstad]

Yesterday I was informed that my GUI doesn't work at all on Macs which don't have OpenMCL 1.0 installed (which excludes something like 99.999% of all Macs on the planet). I think I shall be able to solve this problem quite easily,

Fixed now, I hope. I would appreciate if some OS X 10.4 user could confirm that it works.

Tord

[Alvaro Begue]

What are the problems getting a UCI engine working under Mac OS X? Isn't it POSIX compatible?

The only not-completely-portable part of my engine is a function to check if there is input available in stdin, which I implement by calling select().

Code: Select all

bool is_there_input(){
  fd_set read,write,except;
  FD_ZERO(&read);
  FD_ZERO(&write);
  FD_ZERO(&except);
  FD_SET(0,&read); // stdin

  struct timeval timeout;
  timeout.tv_sec=0;
  timeout.tv_usec=0;

  return select(1,&read,&write,&except,&timeout);
}


Would this work on Mac OS X?

[Sergio Martinez]

What are the problems getting a UCI engine working under Mac OS X? Isn't it POSIX compatible?

The only not-completely-portable part of my engine is a function to check if there is input available in stdin, which I implement by calling select().

Code: Select all

bool is_there_input(){
  fd_set read,write,except;
  FD_ZERO(&read);
  FD_ZERO(&write);
  FD_ZERO(&except);
  FD_SET(0,&read); // stdin

  struct timeval timeout;
  timeout.tv_sec=0;
  timeout.tv_usec=0;

  return select(1,&read,&write,&except,&timeout);
}


Would this work on Mac OS X?

Hola Alvaro

Cuanto tiempo sin saber de ti. Me alegra que sigas en este mundillo.

Un cordial saludo.

[Daniel Mehrmann]

Homer 1.02 for MAC OSX are avaible for download now.

http://www.homer-chess.com

have fun!

Daniel

[Tord Romstad]

Homer 1.02 for MAC OSX are avaible for download now.

http://www.homer-chess.com

have fun!

Thanks, Daniel!

I just downloaded it and installed it in my GUI, and it seems to work!

http://www.glaurungchess.com/Homer.png

There is just one problem: Homer doesn't seem to ponder at all. Do I have a GUI bug, or doesn't Homer support pondering yet?

Tord

[Tord Romstad]

Hi Daniel,

I have two additional comments about Homer 1.02 for OS X:

The program doesn't exit on EOF, which is somewhat annoying. It means, among other things, that if the GUI crashes while Homer is analysing, Homer will keep running in the background, consuming lots of memory and CPU cycles. This is quite easy to fix. If you use fgets to read input, just check the return value of fgets, and exit if it is NULL. I do like this in Glaurung:

Code: Select all

if(fgets(input, 255, stdin) == NULL)
  strcpy(input, "quit\n");


Your READ_ME file claims that Homer 1.02 does not support Chess960. This is apparently not correct. I have already played several Chess960 games between Glaurung and Homer on my Mac, and didn't see any problems.

Keep up the good work! I look forward to future versions.

Tord

[Daniel Mehrmann]

Hi Tord,

thanks for your comments )

Pondering: Yes, you're right A global variable has a wrong value to enable ponder under UCI. Wb2 works fine.

Quiting: Interessting idea i will use it.

Best,
Daniel

Hi Daniel,

I have two additional comments about Homer 1.02 for OS X:

The program doesn't exit on EOF, which is somewhat annoying. It means, among other things, that if the GUI crashes while Homer is analysing, Homer will keep running in the background, consuming lots of memory and CPU cycles. This is quite easy to fix. If you use fgets to read input, just check the return value of fgets, and exit if it is NULL. I do like this in Glaurung:

Code: Select all

if(fgets(input, 255, stdin) == NULL)
  strcpy(input, "quit\n");


Your READ_ME file claims that Homer 1.02 does not support Chess960. This is apparently not correct. I have already played several Chess960 games between Glaurung and Homer on my Mac, and didn't see any problems.

Keep up the good work! I look forward to future versions.

Tord

[Daniel Mehrmann]

Hi Tord,

with pondering decision, i was to fast. Well, the ponder variable was false, but that correct, because i forgot the UCI option.

Homer send "option name Ponder type check default false", so by default homer don't pondering under UCI. But your GUI don't send to enable this stuff. So Homer don't pondering:

Homer 1.02 Build 19
< info Allocate main hashtable memory, rc = 4125 \012
< info Allocate depth hashtable memory, rc = 2062 \012
< info Allocate eval hashtable memory, rc = 437 \012
< info Allocate pawn hashtable memory, rc = 312 \012
< info Allocate memory for hashtables, rc = 7874 \012
> uci\012
> setoption name Hash value 32\012
# int: HashSize = 32\012
> setoption name UCI_ShowCurrline value true\012
> setoption name UCI_Chess960 value false\012
# int: Chess960 support = 0\012
> position fen rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1 moves e2e4\012
< info string fen: rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1 moves e2e4\012\012, rc = 1 \012
# chess960[LIGHT].Qrook = 0\012
# chess960[LIGHT].Krook = 0\012
# chess960[DARK].Krook = 0\012
# chess960[DARK].Qrook = 0\012
> go wtime 59998 winc 0 btime 60000 binc 0\012
< info depth 1 seldepth 1\012

Best,
Daniel

Homer 1.02 for MAC OSX are avaible for download now.

http://www.homer-chess.com

have fun!

Thanks, Daniel!

I just downloaded it and installed it in my GUI, and it seems to work!

http://www.glaurungchess.com/Homer.png

There is just one problem: Homer doesn't seem to ponder at all. Do I have a GUI bug, or doesn't Homer support pondering yet?

Tord

[Tord Romstad]

Hi Tord,

with pondering decision, i was to fast. Well, the ponder variable was false, but that correct, because i forgot the UCI option.

Homer send "option name Ponder type check default false", so by default homer don't pondering under UCI. But your GUI don't send to enable this stuff.

Oops, you are right. I have forgotten to set the "Ponder" option from the GUI. I'll try to fix this soon.

Thanks for the bug report!

Tord