Re: [XBoard-devel] WinBoard installer

[h.g. muller]

> C:\chess\WinBoard>objdump -p gnuches5.exe | grep DLL
> vma:            Hint    Time      Forward  DLL       First
>       DLL Name: cygwin1.dll
>       DLL Name: cygreadline5.dll
>       DLL Name: KERNEL32.dll
>
> From my chess utils path:
> 08/10/2003  04:17 PM           151,552 cygreadline5.dll
> 06/12/2008  11:35 AM         1,872,884 cygwin1.dll

Yes, we definitely should NOT include a cygwin1.dll or anything that 
depends on it. Cygwin1.dll cause nothing but trouble.
Some engines depend on cygwin1.dll, and can only run with a specific 
version of it, which then usually is dfferent from
a specific cygwin1.dll another engine needs. And I don't think you an have 
two different cygwin1.dll at the same time...
So apart from that it is huge, there are plenty other reasons to stay away 
from cygwin1.dll.

If GNU Chess 5 needs it, then GNU Chess 5 is out of all packages, as far as 
I am concerned.

> Polyglot may also depend on cygwin1.dll, depending where you got it.
> There is a version that doesn't depend on it though.  I'm not sure I'd 
> recommend that one, however.

I use a version of Polyglot in the Gold Pack that does not need 
cygwin1.dll. I don't thnk it ever gave rise to any problems.
At least I never received any complaints about it.

> I have a .REG file that I use to set up the PGN file type to invoke 
> winboard in analysis mode.  This has fcp as polyglot, and then I just 
> hand-modify the INI file for whatever engine I want to analyze with.
> That process could be fine-tuned and automated to make it easy on end 
> users to select the analysis engine.  I don't ever use WB engines though, 
> so I'm not sure what else might be necessary to support crafty in that process.

This is essentially what WinBoard does automatically, when you give the
-fUCI / -sUCI option. It writes the original argument of -fcp / -scp to a 
INI file,
and replaces the engine command by "polyglot".

> For analysis, there's no need for a book.  People may want some kind of 
> endgame bases though-- MUCH larger than a book. heh.

Well, we are definitely not going to supply tablebases! :-)
As far as I am concerned, 662 KB for an opening book which people might not 
need is a borderline case. It drives up the
download size by ~50%. But a case could be amde for it, especially if any 
engine could use it.

But is seems a bit strange to start quibbling, now that disks are typically 
100 times larger,
and download links typically 10 times faster than at the time of the 
previous release,
about a universally applicable book of 660 KB, when apparently no one 
blinked an eye
last time when we included a book of 3,600 KB and a DLL of 1,800 KB just to 
run a
single (mediocre) engine...

H.G.

> (Forgive the duplicate message, I'm not mailing list savvy and replied to 
> HGM originally.