Xboard 4.6.X Installer for Mac OSX

[Josh Pettus]

Now Superseded by the Xboard 4.7.2 app thread

Xboard 4.6.2 (7/27/12)
(Bug with permissions of fairymax data files should be fixed as with erroneous "}" symbol in .conf file)

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/50486448/Xboard%204.6.2.zip

This was compiled on Lion and tried on Snow Leopard. Older systems might not work.

It includes:
Xboard 4.6.2, the latest Fairymax 4.8R from hgm.nubati.net, Fruit 2.1, Polyglot 1.4.67b, XQ and default_book.bin Opening Book, default wood square textures, default XQ-board enlarged to bulky, my own XQ piece textures made from the Xiangqi font for size bulky, timeseal, timestamp (new intel version), and several example executable command scripts to launch Xboard into various modes. Plus Imai's apple scripts for managing engines.

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Compared to previous mac installers I made, I added soft links for Xboard, Fairymax, MaxQi, Shamax, and Fruit to /usr/bin, so that in the Darwin terminal, all one needs to do is type in the program name and not have to deal with the extra directory information that I placed upon Xboard.

When installing an engine of your own, after placing it where ever you want such as the Engine Folder I provided, in terminal just do...

ln -s /EngineDir/Engine /usr/bin/engines

Then you will be able to launch that engine with..
xboard -fcp engine -fUCI (if it is is UCI)

Or if you have Apple Xcode tools and can compile an engine from source, then the normal install will be fine too.
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Xboard Hgmaster Branch Beta (1/20/12)
(Bug with permissions of fairymax data files should be fixed)

Available here
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?fhrt3p43k7d734y

Features new xboard menus, including one for switching engines on the fly.

See here for info on other features in this build.

http://hgm.nubati.net/news.html

[Josh Pettus]

I take it we don't have many mac users among us.

[H.G.Muller]

Well, not I. Tord is a devoted Mac user, but he doesn't visit this place so often anymore. You would have better chances on TalkChess. I think there was also somene else with a Mac there that had compiled WinBoard (Ken Dailey?)

[F. Bluemers]

Well, not I. Tord is a devoted Mac user, but he doesn't visit this place so often anymore. You would have better chances on TalkChess. I think there was also somene else with a Mac there that had compiled WinBoard (Ken Dailey?)

Kenny Dial
http://www.sillygreenmonkey.com/chess/

[Olivier Deville]

Well, not I. Tord is a devoted Mac user, but he doesn't visit this place so often anymore. You would have better chances on TalkChess. I think there was also somene else with a Mac there that had compiled WinBoard (Ken Dailey?)

Kenny Dial
http://www.sillygreenmonkey.com/chess/

Kenny Dail even

I have informed him about this thread.

EDIT : just told Tord as well

Olivier

[F. Bluemers]

we is lousy

[H.G.Muller]

I knew there was a 'y' in his name somewhere!

[Tord Romstad]

Well, not I. Tord is a devoted Mac user,

True, but I currently don't have X11 installed on my iMac. I'll try to remember to install it and compile XBoard one of the next few days. I'll let you know if I encounter problems.

[Josh Pettus]

Thank-you so much Tord, and everyone!

[Reinhard Scharnagl]

Well, I am watching this thread. Is there a link to a how to implement a modern Winboard protocol supporting chess, Chess960 and several 10x8 variants? I am very slowly proceeding with Octopus, somehow extending UCI protocol, but still without having a working 8x8 and 10x8 aware UCI GUI for Mac OS X. Maybe an extended Winboard compatible GUI could help ...

[Reinhard Scharnagl]

There has been some related text, I found, at: http://www.open-aurec.com/wbforum/WinBoard/engine-intf.html

[schlucke]

Try this one: http://www.leakyheap.de/cf/xboard-4.0.0-mac.zip

It is a Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64 build, provided as is, not tested. Unzip to /usr/local ...

Code: Select all

  Length     Date   Time    Name
 --------    ----   ----    ----
        0  10-11-09 14:01   bin/
  1825952  10-11-09 14:01   bin/xboard
        0  10-11-09 14:01   share/
        0  10-11-09 14:01   share/info/
     2167  10-11-09 14:01   share/info/copyright.info
      692  10-11-09 14:01   share/info/dir
   210622  10-11-09 14:01   share/info/xboard.info
        0  10-11-09 14:01   share/man/
        0  10-11-09 14:01   share/man/man6/
   154938  10-11-09 14:01   share/man/man6/xboard.6
 --------                   -------
  2194371                   10 files


[Josh Pettus]

Thanks a lot is this 4.0.0 or 4.4.0

It demands a mac version of Farymax and then closes. Rather annoying for a default setting. I don't know if you can create shortcuts the way you could with windows and I'm told there is no .ini file for xboard. So then how do I configure it?

[schlucke]

Sorry, it is 4.4.0, just a typo.

xboard is configured and launched via command line. Read the manual page by typing "man xboard" on the command line.

[H.G.Muller]

Thanks a lot is this 4.0.0 or 4.4.0

It demands a mac version of Farymax and then closes. Rather annoying for a default setting. I don't know if you can create shortcuts the way you could with windows and I'm told there is no .ini file for xboard. So then how do I configure it?

Indeed, XBoard has no startup dialog, so if you don't tell it what to do by the command line it closes. I considered making -ncp the default mode, but that is not really a solution, because it is usually not what you want when you start XBoard through the command line (rather than by clicking a PGN file), and there is no way to load an engine once you started in -ncp mode.

But you could of course install fairymax, that is a lot less demanding than installing GNU Chess.

[Josh Pettus]

Will do! thanks

Could you make a startup dialogue sometime in a future release? maybe have it input commands from some config file?

[H.G.Muller]

Actually I was planning to remove the startup dialog from WinBoard!

I would like it to be possible to load a (new) engine any time, through a menu command. We could then always start in -ncp mode by default. Having an xboard.ini file similar to winboard.ini, is on the wish list. It is actually already possible to use "indirection files" as arguments, as an undocumented option (which I use to facilitate testing): when you type "xboard @foo", xboards treats the contents of the file foo like it was on the command line. The format is a bit different from the winboard.ini file: option name and value would have to go on separate lines. (This removes the need for quoting arguments that contain a space.) So in the file foo you would have to write something like:

Code: Select all

-fcp
maxqi 22
-fd
/home/hgm
-defaultHashSize
128
-variant
xiangqi
-polyglotBook
/home/hgm/books/xq_book.bin
-usePolyglotBook
true
-saveGameFile
maxqi_games.pgn
-xBook
-reuse


Not sure that we will keep this format, or even this feature. It is not possible to save settings on the file, neither on command, nor on exit, which makes it also less useful.

[Josh Pettus]

Sounds even better! As I'm sure you already know and just forgot to mention, be sure to add a separate dialog for selecting different ICS selections as well. "xboard @foo" I forgot about that command. You recommended that I use that for winboard to direct it to a second .ini file for xiangqi and XQ engines. It has been very useful. Personally I hope you don't get rid of it or it for .ini files or Id have to change my setup But yeah, an actual .ini file would be much better.

[H.G.Muller]

For WinBoard the @inifile command-line indirection is documented, and will certainly stay.

But XBoard did not have it, which made testing a bit cumbersome, so I quickly added a hack to do this. I am not sure the current format will continue to be supported, though. I would like XBoard and WinBoard to support the same format ini files, and that is not the case now. WinBoard has option name and value on the same line, and also allows = as a separator between the two, as well as a space. But putting everything that XBoard would have to see as a separate argument on a new line was a very efficient way to circumvent the quoting problem. Unlike WinBoard, XBoard relies on the shell to handle the first round of unquoting, so there was no code in it at all which I could draw on.

[imai]

Hi, I am new to this forum and I'm very interested in this topic. Unfortunately the link to the compiled version of Xboard for Mac posted by Slucke is broken. Can the file be made available again please?
As an alternative I may try to compile the latest version of Xboard if anyone can give me exact instructions how to do this. I have the tools and the time to do this but I lack the knowledge. If I succeed I am also willing to compile and test beta versions of Xboard.