GNU chess 5.03beta

[Simon Waters]

A beta version of GNU Chess 5.03 is now available from;

ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/chess

file: chess-5.03beta.tar.gz

A subset of the old opening book (smallbook.pgn.gz) will be
available from the same directory shortly. This version of GNU
chess is much smaller as the opening book will be a seperate
download!


The major changes over version 5.02 that need consideration when
compiling 5.03beta;

1) Enhanced handling of Opening book generation and use.

Thus the opening book should be recreated from PGN files, by
first removing the old book.dat file, and then doing a "book add
afileintheformatknownas.pgn". The program still requires PGN
files to be relatively "clean", if in doubt use the supplied PGN
files.

Opening book creation can still be quite time consuming on all
but the fastest computers.

2) Reduced default hashsize

The default hash size has been reduced to a smaller value. Those
users who wish to configure GNU chess to play the best possible
game of chess should either increase the setting of HASHSLOTS
and PAWNSLOTS in "common.h" before compiling, or issue a
"hashsize NNNN" command after starting GNU chess. (It is
expected that hash size and/or memory usage options will be
standardised between interfaces and engines for the 5.04
release, allowing this to be set from compliant interfaces).

3) Portability

Some small changes have been made to make it easier to build GNU
chess on other platforms. If you successfully build this version
of GNU chess, please take the time to let me know the OS, OS
revision, Compiler & Compiler revision, Make tool and revision.

The build procedure is still not fully GNU standard conforming,
this will be fixed in 5.04. Please refer to the file "INSTALL"
in the chess directory for detailed installation instructions.

If you have problems building this beta release let me know.




The Changelog should be referred to for a more complete list of
changes.

Of note;

Program no longer exits under xboard on certain Solaris systems.
Program no longer allows it's opponent to leave their king in
check, this occured under rare circumstances, and would result
in the King being captured.
PGN notation of play from an EPD position with black to move is
now correctly formatted.
Misc. file handling bugs have been corrected.

Numerous corrections and improvements to the tree searching and
evaluation code means that the program is expected to be
stronger than GNU chess 5.02, independent of improvements to the
opening book handling.


The object of this beta release is to ensure that the changes
made do not impact compilation on different systems. Only
essential changes to allow GNU chess to be compiled on popular
target systems will be made between this beta release and the
Official 5.03 release. The beta release tarball may be updated
with these changes during the beta testing period.

Thanks to the many people who contributed to GNU chess 5.03beta
(Especially those who included patches with their bug reports!),
Chua Kong-Sian for writing it, and Stuart Cracraft for
maintaining it previously and helping me take over that role.

 Simon Waters

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