Bug#737347: xboard: wish for pre-4.8 snapshot for experimental to get new features more exposure

[Yann Dirson]

Hi Vincent,

On Tue, Feb 11, 2014 at 08:02:39PM +0100, Vincent Legout wrote:
> 
> Yann Dirson <ydirson at free.fr> writes:
> 
> > 4.8 features many new features, including support for new large shogi
> > variants, and overall better support for non-chess ("xboard @shogi"
> > and friends), including the ability for a compatible engine to declare
> > itself to xboard.
> >
> > I have packaged hachu some time ago, as the only available DFSG
> > program able to play those large variants (I've kept it in
> > experimental till now, since there is no GUI yet in unstable to play
> > them).  Having a compatible xboard there would allow to start working
> > on hachu/xboard integration, and to give more precise feedback to
> > upstream to make sure that those new features are packaging-friendly.
> >
> > A master-20140119 snapshot was tagged recently, it looks like a good
> > version to package.
> 
> I've just uploaded this snapshot to experimental. I tried running hachu
> and it seems to be working for the "mighty lion" and "cho shogi"
> variants, but not using the shogi (9x9) variant. Let me know if you need
> anything in XBoard to improve the hachu integration.

Thanks!

(H.G.Müller CC'd as upstream for these features)

Had a quick test:

* games defaulting to hachu (@chu and @sho) look OK
* games defaulting to gnu(mini)shogi require xboard support, I'll
  upload a gnushogi master snapshot into experimental as well; they
  work well with the correct binaries in $PATH
* @mini should I think default to japanese theme
* @xq board drawing is messed with large window sizes here, although OK
  with smaller window sizes (see http://imagebin.org/292981), otherwise
  seems OK
* I feel .desktop files for shipped confs would be needed to make them
  more visible to users

* Tried Mighty Lion by starting "xboard -fcp hachu -scp hachu" and
  selecting that variant, looks like hachu crashed (xboard -debug
  output attached for comment by HGM, hachu is current master, ie
  version 0.17-3-g3460d0c).  The same technique is OK with Sho and Chu.
* Trying to switch to Dai or Tenjiku is refuse with "Engine did not send
  setup for non-standard variant"
* Maybe a @hachu conf would be useful for easy access to those games ?
  Maybe better shipped by hachu itself ?

* Switching to Chu from "xboard -fcp hachu -scp hachu" enlarges the
  window while keeping the same tile size, which always make it too
  big for my screen, since xboard already starts up using the full
  screen height for 8 tiles.

* I guess xboard shipping chu and sho confs make those in hachu.git
  redundant ?