Re: [gnugo-devel] cache, semeai, and owl threats

[Gunnar Farnebäck]

Joe wrote:
> I started looking over gnugo code for the first time recently, and had
> a few questions. First, why is the cache not set higher than 8MB by
> default?

It uses a replacement scheme for collisions which is quite effective.
Increasing the cache size has almost no effect on performance.

> Second, why are the semeai and owl threats modules not
> compiled in by default.

Owl threats are disabled by default because the code is not very good;
it mostly spends time without adding strength. A well-written owl threat
detection would be valuable though. I'm not sure what you mean with
semeai here. The semeai module is always used but there's no code at all
to detect semeai threats.

> Third, I know that Texinfo is the official
> documentation format for GNU, but I believe XHTML would also be nice.

I can't say I see anything particularly attractive in XHTML but in any
case we follow GNU policy here.

> Also, I would like to help out with the gnugo project, but I am not an
> expert with C, and am a little confused about where to start.

This is starting to become an FAQ, so I think I refer to
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnugo-devel/2007-05/msg00016.html

What skills do you have that could be useful?

/Gunnar