Re: [XBoard-devel] Installer

[h.g. muller]

> I don't understand.  Logically, focusing on winboard would be smaller than 
> including extra stuff.  That's what I suggested.

Nothing of that is mystery or secret. The sizes of each file pr folder can 
be easily viewed. I guess
the thing to understand was that the 4.2.7 installer of coure did not focus 
on WinBoard at all.
It was a distribution package for GNU Chess and Crafty, with WinBoard 
included as a tiny add-on.
Each of these engines was about 4 times the size of WinBoard.

IMO focusing on WB means distributing a bare winboard.exe. We can do that, 
but I see no reason
why we should not offer a pre-installed version too.


> That's fine.  Let them get that from something like your Gold Pack while 
> the winboard project focuses exclusively on winboard.  I don't think it's 
> our job to decide what people should run with winboard.  The winboard 
> project should be about improving winboard, and that's it.

OK, let's try to apply some logic here:
Are you against including timestamp.exe and timeseal.exe in the main 
distribution vehicle for WinBoard?
If not, what exactly is your reason for wanting them in? As you remarked, 
they are closed source, non-GNU, non-GPL.
Now if you don't have a reason and don't want them in at all, fine, you are 
a bare winboard.exe customer.
But I can assure you, they make up only a very small fraction of the 
Windows users.
If you do have a reason, then explain me why that reason does not equally 
apply to Polyglot?
At least Polyglot is open source and GPL, unlike timestap and timeseal. OK, 
so Polyglot is
not strictly needed by people that want to play against an engine, because 
they can settle
for a second-rate engine that natively uses WB protocol, in stead of the 
one of their choice.
But neither are timestamp and timeseal essential for playing on an ICS. 
Just let people play
without them and suffer a bit of lag, big deal. If it means they cannot do 
blitz, let them play
longer TC. They won't mind that nearly as much as someone wanting to use 
Rybka minds
when he has to use GNU Chess in stead!

Including the icshelpers but excluding Polyglot only makes sense when the 
function of WinBoard
as an ICSclient would far outweigh the function of acting as engine GUI in 
importance. But that
is not how we present WinBoard. (In fact the prevailing opinion seems to be 
opposite. I have seen
discussions in many forums on which GUI was best, and although there are 
always people that
defend the POV that WB is best for playing against engnes and engine 
tournaments, I have
never seen anyone suggest that WB is a competative ICS client, and people 
immediately settle
on BabasChess or Dasher. Unless they want to play engine bots, of course.) 
According to the
description on our home-page, we present WB as ICS client, engine GUI and 
PGN viewer
on an equal basis.

> Including other stuff, particularly stuff that isn't GPLv3, is really not 
> consistent with a GNU project.  Particularly as we have several closed 
> source items in the last package I built.

Well, Crafty is not GPL, and it was included in the 4.2.7 installer. So I 
am acting on the assumption
that this is no problem. In fact you just proposed to include it with 4.4.0 
in stead of what we include
so you are not very consistent about this.

> I don't see any reason to provide anything but help, winboard, and perhaps 
> some INI files.

Well, this certainly is an option we should consider, even if only to offer 
it next to a bigger install.
You don't even need the ini file, WB will make one by itself, and if there 
are no other components
installed on the machine the compiler defaults are fine. So just package:

winboard.exe
winboard.chm
winboard.hlp
COPYING.txt
FAQ.html
manual.html
zippy.README

and that's it. No timeseal, timestamp, polyglot. No engine. Just the stuff 
we produced ourselves,
and a menu item to startup winboard.exe through the startup dialog. Perhaps 
we should indeed
not consider it our task to spread software written outside te project, and 
leave bundling entirely
to the outside world (like WB forum).

We should be prepared, though, that this offering is not what most people 
want. So I think it
would be important to at least offer them links to install bundles that are 
actually useful, if we
don't provide any such bundle ourselves. And severely warn them that when 
the download
WinBoard 4.4.0 from the GNU site they should not expect it to do anything 
useful whatsoever
without a few days of muddling to collect and install essential auxiliary 
programs without any
help or description from a manual or tutorial.