xboard 4.4.0 - PolyglotDir bug

[schlucke]

I observed the following bugs(?) in the new release:

1) The man page is wrong. It should be "-polyglotDir", not "-PolyglotDir".

2) If I specify a -polyglotDir, it didn't work. Xboard creates the polyglot_1st.ini and polyglot_2nd.ini files in the current directory and then terminates with "Faild to start first chess program polyglot ./polyglot_1st.ini ... No such file or directory".

My start script is:

Code: Select all

./xboard                                  \
-fcp "../Engines/Stockfish-1.5/stockfish" -fUCI      \
-scp "../Engines/Shredder-12/Shredder12Mac" -sUCI   \
-size 80,1,12,0,12,1                        \
-coords                                    \
-movesound                                 \
-highlight                                 \
-clock                                    \
-xponder                                 \
-usePolyglotBook true                        \
-polyglotBook "../Books/performance.bin"         \
-polyglotDir "../tmp/"                        \
-fNoOwnBookUCI                              \
-sNoOwnBookUCI                              \
-defaultPathEGTB "../Bases/Nalimov/"            \
-smpCores 1                                 \
-defaultHashSize 512                        \
-darkSquareColor  "#7085B6"                   \
-lightSquareColor "#EFEFEF"                   \
-whitePieceColor  "#FFFFFF"                     \
-blackPieceColor   "#202020"                  \
-highlightSquareColor "#FF0000"                  \
-lowTimeWarningColor "#FF0000"                  \
-font "-bitstream-bitstream vera sans-medium-r-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*"


Any problems here at my site?

Bye,
Holger

[H.G.Muller]

I guess this indeed does not work as advertized. XBoard always makes the polyglot.ini files in the current directory. So the -polyglotDir has to be ".", which is the default.

In WinBoard the -polyglotDir is the directory where polyglot.exe is, not where the polyglot.ini files are, as WinBoard will pass those as full path names to the WinBoard installation folder, where it also makes them (no matter what your current directory is when you call WinBoard). But in Linux there was no such concept as "XBoard installation directory", (or it must nbe /usr/games or /usr/share/games/xboard, but they are not writable to normal users and thus not usable for makinf the polyglot.ini files), and I replaced it by the current directory. So XBoard always passes "./polyglot_1st.ini" to Polyglot, which means that Polyglot must also be started with the same current directory as XBoard was started with.

In a future version of WinBoard / XBoard the polyglot_1st and polyglot_2nd arguments will likely disappear anyway, as there now are Polyglots that take the value of everything that could be specified in a polyglot.ini file from the command line. So I am not sure it would be worth it to solve this. For now, there is no other way than to stay away from the -polyglotDir option, and live with the polyglot.ini temps in your working directory. Or add a cd command in the script to first change to a tmp directory before you call xboard.

[schlucke]

OK, thanks for the explaination. If the next version works different, don't forget to remove the switch

Thanks,
Holger