Re: [XBoard-devel] when to release 4.4.1?

[Tim Mann]

On Tue, 20 Oct 2009 00:11:12 +0200, "h.g. muller" <address@hidden> wrote:
> OK, I think I am done with all bugs now:
>   #10990 cmail does not seem to support .cmailgames or .cmailaliases
>               ???

I looked into that one and have updated the bug tracker.  The features
are long gone, so we just need to delete the following from the xboard
documentation.  (The "FILES" section mentioned in the bug no longer exists.)

       -gamesFile <file>
              A file containing a list of games  with  email  addresses.  This
              defaults  to  the environment variable ‘$CMAIL_GAMES’ or failing
              that ‘.cmailgames’.

       -aliasesFile <file>
              A file containing one  or  more  aliases  for  a  set  of  email
              addresses.   This   defaults   to   the   environment   variable
              ‘$CMAIL_ALIASES’ or failing that ‘.cmailaliases’.

>   #8847 Moving backward while examining on FICS not reported to engine
>              Won't fix. I am not sure if I understad this, but if I do, I 
> don't think there is anything to fix

Are you sure that isn't a real bug?  It sounded plausible to me.  I
can't say I've tried it, though!

> Some point I do worry about: when I play WinBoard with GUI book, the moves 
> do not seem random:
> the first move after I start up WinBoard is always e2e4, while the book 
> also contains d2d4.
> I initialize in InitBackend with srand(timeMark.ms), and I use random() to 
> select the book move
> and initial setup. Are these functions that do not belong together in 
> gcc/Cygwin?

They don't belong together in general.  srand() reseeds rand(), while
srandom() reseeds random().  Calling only srand() most likely still
leaves random() with its default initial seed.

A recent Linux man page tells me that "The versions of rand() and
srand() in the Linux C Library use the same random number generator as
random(3) and srandom(3)..."  However, even that might mean only that
they use the same *algorithm*, not that they share state.

> Perhaps we should
> call random() fifty times at startup; I do that for setting up FRC 
> positions, and they seem to be
> different every time.

Calling random() 50 times is not going to make it any more random.  It
just gets you 50 steps farther into the pseudo-random sequence (which
is deterministic given the seed).  So I don't understand why you do
that or what it's supposed to accomplish.

-- 
Tim Mann  address@hidden  http://tim-mann.org/