Building winboard without GUI libraries

[matthewlai]

Hello!

I noticed that winboard/xboard now has a new -noGUI switch (well, new since I just got back to computer chess after being away for almost 10 years). That's awesome!

Just wondering if there is a way to build xboard without linking to GUI libraries?

I am hoping to do some engine vs engine testing on a HPC cluster, and those nodes don't have GUI libraries available and installing them is not an option.

If not, does anyone know of a program that does? I basically just need a simple program that handles a game between 2 engines, on Linux, without dependency on any UI library (preferably any library).

Thanks!

[H.G.Muller]

Unfortunately the -noGUI option still doesn't do as much as you need. It only suppresses the GUI functions during playing of a game (board update and such). I still have the ambition to create a version of XBoard that could run without Xaw or GTK libraries (called NoBoard). But it is not entirely trivial, as these libraries are also used for dispatching I/O and timer events, which would still be needed even for a completely GUI-less version. So that part would have to be completely rewritten.

I think cutechess-cli will do what you want.

[matthewlai]

Ah I see. Thanks! I will give that a try!

[matthewlai]

It looks like cutechess-cli still requires Qt Probably for the same reason as xboard.

Looks like I'll be rolling my own, then!