Weiqi is a network-based GTP client for GNU Go. It exists primarily as a example codebase for the Practicing Ruby journal. It is functional enough to play a complete game, but not stable enough yet to be practical for day-to-day use. As you can see, the UI is pretty minimal:
If you're here to complete the Practicing Ruby code reading exercise, or if you're just curious about how this application is implemented, be sure to check out the DESIGN.md file. It provides an overview of what is good, bad, and ugly about Weiqi's codebase. But if you want to actually run Weiqi on your own machine, installation and usage instructions follow below.
This project was developed on Mac OS X, but should work on all platforms. It has a few dependencies though, some of which you'll need to install manually.
I'm sorry the following instructions are somewhat lengthy but still a bit vague: the project is in a very early stage and so I've not had a chance to streamline the packaging yet. But in most cases, it should be fairly quick to get things up and running, just a bit awkward.
GNU Go is the game engine that actually understands how to play Go, Weiqi is just a graphical client to it. On most Linux distros, you should be able to find this application in your package repository, so just install it as you normally would other packages. On OS X, if you're using homebrew, you can install it as follows:
$ brew tap homebrew/games
$ brew install gnu-go
There is also a pre-built universal binary which seems to work, but you may need to fiddle with your PATH in your shell in order to get it working. (In other words, you're on your own!):
http://www.sente.ch/pub/software/goban/gnugo-3.7.11.dmg
I have not attempted to install GNU Go on Windows, but it looks like there are binaries available there as well, but YMMV:
(Note: Please feel free to send a pull request to update this documentation with what you needed to do to get things working on your platform)
If you are using JRuby, you do not need to install any special graphics libraries
to run Weiqi, as it ships with a Swing-based version that will work on JRuby out
of the box. But if you're using standard Ruby (or maybe even Rubinius
-- untested), you'll need to install Ray. It is listed in the project's Gemfile,
so running bundle will attempt to install it, but it has a few dependencies
of its own that you may not have installed on your system.
If you're on Windows, prebuilt dependencies are included in the gem, so you don't need to do anything special.
If you're on OS X, you need glew and libsndfile. Here's how to install them
using Homebrew:
$ brew install glew libsndfile
On Linux, you need glew and libsndfile, but you also need freetype2, OpenAL,
and OpenGL. Check your package manager, and good luck!
(If you're running on a popular distro like Ubuntu or Debian, I'd appreciate it if you contribute a pull request with specific install instructions!)
Assuming you have bundler handy, you can install all required gems as follows:
$ bundle
Peek at the Gemfile if you rather install your dependencies manually, but be sure to stroke your beard (or your friend's beard) while you do so!
Run the following command from the project root:
$ ruby bin/weiqi
This should display a Go board. You can click on any intersection to place your stones. Click anywhere in the area outside of the board to PASS, and close the window to resign. Upon completing a full game, the score will be posted to terminal.
If things don't work as expected, please check the installation instructions again to make sure you didn't miss anything. If that doesn't work, go ahead and file a ticket!
This project is licensed under the GNU General Public License, Version 3.
Contributors retain full copyright to their contributions, but must agree to license their work under the same license of the project itself.
Feel free to open a ticket or email gregory@practicingruby.com