GNU Go Development Versions

History of stable releases

• GNU Go 1.1 was posted to comp.sources.games March 13 1989. (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)
• GNU Go 1.2 was released sometime in 1995.
• Work resumed on GNU Go in October 1998.
• GNU Go 2.0 was released April 20, 1999.
• GNU Go 2.4 was released September 12, 1999.
• GNU Go 2.6 was released February 13, 2000.
• GNU Go 3.0 was released August 24, 2001.
• GNU Go 3.2 was released April 25, 2002.
• GNU Go 3.4 was released July 31, 2003.

GNU Go 3.0 is about four stones stronger than GNU Go 2.6.

GNU Go 3.2 is about as fast as GNU Go 3.0 but stronger.

GNU Go 3.4 is slightly slower than GNU Go 3.2 but stronger.

Authors

GNU Go authors (in chronological order of contribution) are Man Lung Li, Wayne Iba, Daniel Bump, David Denholm, Gunnar Farnebäck, Nils Lohner, Jerome Dumonteil, Tommy Thorn, Nicklas Ekstrand, Inge Wallin, Thomas Traber, Douglas Ridgway, Teun Burgers, Tanguy Urvoy, Thien-Thi Nguyen, Heikki Levanto, Mark Vytlacil, Adriaan van Kessel, Wolfgang Manner, Jens Yllman, Don Dailey, Mans Ullerstam, Arend Bayer, Trevor Morris, Evan Berggren Daniel, Fernando Portela, Paul Pogonyshev, S.P. Lee and Stephane Nicolet.

You Can Help!

• Here is a GNU Go task list. Contact us if you are interested in helping the development of GNU Go.

Download

You can download GNU Go development versions here. Versions with an even revision number (2.0, 2.4, 3.0.x, ...) are considered stable. The latest stable version is GNU Go 3.4, which can be found at ftp.gnu.org and its mirrors. (Mirroring may take a day or two to propogate. Another copy is at this site.) Versions with an odd revision number (2.3.63, 2.5.4, 3.1.x, ...) are development versions. They are not mirrored at ftp.gnu.org.

Untar the sources and consult the file README. Details of the changes is contained in ChangeLog (updated with each release).

Older versions

• GNU Go archive. Stable versions 2.0, 2.4, 3.0.0 (no longer at ftp.gnu.org) and development versions since 3.0.0 are archived here.
• Interrim development page. This is an archive of the Lysator versions of GNU Go, through 2.7.161.

Development versions (3.5.xx)

• Development versions from the 3.3 line
• gnugo-3.5.1.tar.gz. Cosmic by default. Here's the patch relative to gnugo-3.4. September 4, 2003.
• gnugo-3.5.2.tar.gz. Here's the patch relative to gnugo-3.5.3. November 5, 2003.
• gnugo-3.5.3.tar.gz. Here's the patch relative to gnugo-3.5.2. January 7, 2004.
• gnugo-3.5.4.tar.gz. Here's the patch relative to gnugo-3.5.3. January 23, 2004.
• For the very latest version in the 3.5 line, check the GNU Go CVS at Savannah.
• Quick link to browse the sources in CVS.

Pending patches for 3.5.5

• paul_5_5.7. More aggressive recursive_disconnect2().
• splee_5_5.4. Two edge joseki patterns.
• splee_5_5.2. SGF traces revised.
• stephane_5_5.2. Move valuation tweaks.
• splee_5_5.1b. Revision of splee_5_5.1a. Revision of splee_5_5.1. Revision of break_chain3().
• stephane_5_5.1. Connection pattern and tests.
• paul_5_3.3. Be less optimistic about large bulky eyes.
• readline_5_2.1. Readline support.
• paul_5_2.8. An optics patch. Whether it is good is not clear.
• large_scale_5_1.1a. Rework of large_scale_5_1.1. Capture on a large scale.

Patches in the CVS for 3.5.5

• arend_5_5.5. Breakin and readconnect fixes.
• paul_5_5.6. paul_5_5_5a was checked in with new features effectively disabled by accident. This patch reenables them.
• splee_5_5.5. Slightly generalized A1124a.
• paul_5_5.5a, the remaining part of paul_5_5.5 after applying paul_5_5.4. First version of Owl threat combinator. Original version also reverted teun_5_5.2a (accidentially), which is fixed in paul_5_5.5a.
• paul_5_5.4. Pattern attributes reimplementation. Rebroken out of paul_5_5.5.
• copyright_5_5.1. A few previously missed copyright notices updated.
• paul_5_5.3. Move valuation patch (was listed as paul_5_5.2).
• paul_5_5.2a, a slightly revised version of paul_5_5.2. A few test cases from a match between 3.5.4 and 3.4.
• splee_5_5.3. Seki test cases.
• gunnar_5_5.6. analyze_eyegraph improved.
• gunnar_5_5.5. --level can adjust min_level and max_level.
• teun_5_5.2a. Revision of teun_5_5.2. Don't malloc 0 bytes.
• teun_5_5.1a. Revision of teun_5_5.1. Warnings fixed.
• inge_5_5.1. Debugboard mended.
• teun_5_5.3. Bugfix in hashdata_init().
• zm_removal_3_5.1. Memory allocation option /Zm1100 taken down in patterns.dsp.
• inge_5_5.2. New cache for connection and semeai. However, due to a big breakage the patch was added with most of the changes temporarily disabled.
• gunnar_5_5.4. Owl tuning.
• gunnar_5_5.3. Caching of unbranched owl nodes.
• arend_5_5.4. Source code comments for heap in readconnect.c.
• stephane_5_1.1a. URLs to regression views.
• arend_5_5.3. Complete conversion of break-in code to new cache.
• gunnar_5_5.2. Tuning, mostly owl.
• gunnar_5_5.1. Test cases for 3-3 invasion.
• paul_5_5.1. Yet more features for `twogtp.pike'.
• paul_5_4.4. More correct SGF writing.
• help_5_5.1. Write `--help' and `--version' messages to stdout, not stderr.
• bugfix_5_5.1. Don't overflow in cache size computation.
• arend_5_5.2. Fix TRACE_READ_RESULTS.
• inge_5_4.2a. Revision of inge_5_4.2. Owl uses new cache.
• arend_5_5.1. Tests from the aya game at the CGF meeting.

Patches that may not be used

• gunnar_5_3.5. Workaround to avoid a crash. Replaced with paul_5_3.5.
• splee_5_1.8. Test case.
• arend_3_20.5b (Update July 7th). Big experimental patch rewriting owl escaping. Will be revised further.
• splee_5_1.2. CC509.
• splee_5_1.3. Omit CC31. (This patch has no effect. While CC31 may be redundant it is better to leave it for an organized cleaning of connection patterns.)
• evan_5_1.1. Hoshi tuning. (This was agreed to be a little too dangerous for gnugo.)
• splee_5_1.4. Test revision.
• inge_5_1.1. First go at new caching. This patch will be extended.
• paul_3_18.7. Eye margins. A portion of this is in the cvs as paul_3_19.3.
• evan_3_18.13. Intermediate atari_atari moves. Evan intends to revise this patch.

Other patches

• zGoGUI.zip from Kevin Yong.
• recent patches.
• probreader.pl. Script for translating Thomas Wolf's problems, by Pierce Wetter.
• sidliu. A patch to GNU Go 3.2 adding the ability to talk to a port. gtpclient.zip, a client that goes with the patch. See this message from Sid Liu about the patch.
• old and in the way patches

Bug reports

• Two assertion failures in board.c:656 (do_trymove) reported by Josh Stern (both in games with undo): See this email from June and another one reported in July.
• Setting handicap 10 in cgoban leads to crash.
• ascii interface error with boardsize 2 or 20.
• array bounds violation.
• MAX_REASONS needs further enlargement.

The Go Text Protocol

• Official GTP web page.
• gtpclient.c. GTP mediator for IGS by Tristan Cazenave.
• The GTP mailing list web page.
• Philipp Garcia's GTP over TCP/IP implementation.
• Some demonstration programs are included in the GNU Go GTP sources. These include the useful twogtp, which plays two gtp processes against each other, and is capable of running tournaments unattended and 2ptkgo (by Don Dailey) which uses perltk to display the game.
• gtpparser.tar.gz from Hellwig Geisse, a proposed gtp parser. Requires Bison and Flex.
• Sente Software's Goban for Mac OS X uses the GTP.

Links

• GNU Go 3.4 documentation on the web. Made from the Texinfo documentation.
• GNU Go main page with more links.
• Lysator mirror of this page.
• Another copy of this page, but sometimes more up to date. Obtained directly from the CVS browser.
• Regression failure html views, Trevor's site
• Regression failure html views, Evan's site
• Mailing list archive. Older mail is in the old mail archive.
• Subscribe to the GNU Go development list. This list is for the development of the program. Traffic may be moderate to heavy.
• Or, subscribe to the GNU Go announcement list. Announcements only. Traffic should be light. Since announcements will be echoed to the development list you do not need to subscribe to both lists.
• GNU Go on NNGS rating graph and recent games.
• fltkgo. A GUI for GNU Go based on fltk.
• GoThic. A Qt Goban widget that will work with GNU Go.
• Gogui from Markus Enzenberger is a Java workbench that allows you to play with a gtp engine such as GNU Go. Source code is in the CVS. Licence is GPL. Potentially very useful. Like Gothic, allows you to monitor the gtp stream.
• The CGoban1 development list.
• Theorem Proving in Go by Tristan Cazenave, and le Recherche Abstraite Graduelle de Preuve.
• Tuning GNU Go
• Some perl tools for rotating and displaying sgf files and test suites.
• The SGF specification
• The Go Modem Protocol.
• Official GTP web page.
• GNU Go incidence reports
• Bouzy's thesis (from the Go archives computer library at IGS) describes the algorithm in score.c around page 84.
• Eyespace values in Go by Howard Landman, another paper we've found useful.

Send inquiries and bug reports to gnugo@gnu.org.

Please send FSF & GNU inquiries & questions to gnu@gnu.org. There are also other ways to contact the FSF.

Please send comments on these web pages to webmasters@www.gnu.org, send other questions to gnu@gnu.org.

Copyright (C) 1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA

Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.

Updated: Last modified: Thu Feb 12 17:11:00 2004