scidvspc-960-hkvc

SCID vs. PC is a Chess Toolkit
Shane's Chess Information Database is a powerful Chess Toolkit,
with which one can create huge databases, run chess engines, and
play casual games against the computer or online with the Free
Internet Chess Server. It was originally written by Shane Hudson,
and has received strong contribution from Pascal Georges and
others.

Scid vs. PC began with bug-fixes for the computer-versus-player
features of Scid (hence the name), but has evolved into a solid
alternative with many new features and interfaces. The project
is authored by Stevenaaus and numerous contributors

Source

upstream
svn checkout http://svn.code.sf.net/p/scidvspc/code/ scidvspc-code

snap
$SNAP/usr/share/doc/scidvspc-960-hkvc/
$SNAP gives the snap install dir
You may also find this among my https://github.com/hanishkvc repositories.

Environment

TCLLIBRARY, TKLIBRARY and TCLLIBPATH env variables need to point to
the tcltk from the snap. Layout mechanism of snapcraft/snap used to
ensure that tcltk from snap maps to the standard expected paths on
the runtime system.

Home

The AppWorkingDir is user's $HOME/snap/scidvspc-960-hkvc/<revision>

$SNAPUSERDATA points to this AppWorkingDir.

ToRun

type scidvspc-960-hkvc.scidvspc in a console/terminal

The default stockfish version from ubuntu is made available in $SNAP/usr/games/
Additionally stockfish avx2 version is also provided in the same location.

Sound

Snap doesnt auto connect the alsa interface to snaps. The user is required
to explicitly connect the snap's alsa plug to the system's alsa interface.

For this run the below

sudo snap connect scidvspc-960-hkvc:alsa

NOTE> If there is a issue with sound folders setup, cross verify that the
sounds folder under options->sounds is set to

/snap/scidvspc-960-hkvc/current/usr/local/share/scid/sounds

NOTE: due to a issue with underlying sound helper of tcl, you may get audio
for every alternate sound move announcement.

Network FICS Ping

One needs to run

sudo snap connect scidvspc-960-hkvc:network-observe

to allow the snap to use ping (FICS server), else it will give a error dialog,
when connecting to FICS.

Version

Custom overriding of pull wrt scidvspc svn based source is implemented to
overcome a issue noticed with latest snapcraft wrt svn repositories.

As this snap includes some of my patches, which arent upstreamed or not of
interest to upstream, so svn version of scidvspc to build on is fixed
in snapcraft.yaml. However one can try change to a newer version and cross
check if out-of-upstream patches work ok or not.

Revision of upstream is picked from same mentioned in version string.

patchs in this snap

** Wrt Source tree
Diffs that patch wrt scidvspc source tree, placed in
snap/local/patchs.srcscid/

After adding new diff run
snapcraft clean; snapcraft

Wrt final scid file
Patchs wrt final scid file, placed in
snap/local/patchs.endscid/

After adding new patch run (avoids downloading again)
snapcraft clean force-primo fixit-scidvspc
snapcraft pull force-primo; snapcraft

In these Releases

Sound, Figurines font, tDom, Network (FICS), Online tablebases, ...

Visualisation of analysis engines' PVs on analysis boards.

Play-UCI AECoach mode which allows user to select AnalysisEngine to be
used as coach, to help evaluate user moves and alert if needed.

• in general check if player is improving on their score and or not

getting worse.

• if player takes time to make their move, then also cross check if the

player made the best or ~equivalent to best move. This helps especially
if opponent made a blunder.

• Also provide simple-no-ae opponent engine eval based alerting.

Show evalbar next to analysis boards.

Show MultiPV TrafficLights next to analysis boards, to hint sharpness or
trickyness of a position.

Auto refreshed Online PGN with IfModifiedSince and Rate limiting

Check changelog for more

** NOTE

This is just a experimental snap packaging of ScidVsPC 960 by HanishKVC,
with some additions and patches (some of which have been upstreamed).