Bug#166259: ITP: lasker -- FICS-like free internet chess server

[Lukas Geyer <lukas@debian.org>]

Daniel Burrows <dnb114@psu.edu> writes:

>   Is that the same thing the chessd project mentions?
> 
> There's been requests for a copy of lasker, which isn't much more than a
> repackaged GICS. Here it is: lasker 1.0 We really don't have the
> manpower to give much support for this, unfortunately- we've got our
> attention on working with our totally from-scratch project, fischer. You
> can try asking the list, but don't get mad if we can't give you detailed
> help.

No, it started from that codebase, but Andrew Tridgell has really
revamped and improved it a lot. Latest released version is 2.2.2. He
also added functionality to update the server without restarting
(through use of dlopen() etc.). It is a bit confusing with the
different versions, the current versions are at

http://chess.samba.org/ftp/lasker/

I am currently working on the CVS version which you can get via

cvs -z5 -d :pserver:cvs@pserver.samba.org:/cvsroot co lasker

You can see some of the discussion and announcements on the mailing
list

http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum=chessd-general

It is very low-traffic, so you can have a pretty comprehensive
overview of the developments in the last year. The problem with
fischer seems that it is more of an idea right now, and the main
contributor, Dan Papasian, seems to have absolutely no time to really
work on it at the moment. As you can see on the list, I once inquired
in February about the vitality of the project, and got no response. I
would rather stick to lasker for the moment, it is quite usable, at
least judging from my first preliminary tests. Andrew Tridgell uses it
at some local school, and it seems to work for him.

Lukas