Please note This repository has been superceded in every possible way by the peer tarrasch-chess-gui repository which replaces it. From November 25 2016 Tarrasch V2 (this repository) has been retired in favour of Tarrasch V3 (the peer repository).

The Tarrasch Chess GUI V2. No longer work in progress, but a working useful chess program. New Tarrasch development is occurring in peer repository tarrasch-chess-gui

Note the existence of branches named for releases published on www.triplehappy.com. For example: V2.03b for a June 2015 release.

Note also the existence of branch unicode_build_by_ralph_moritz. This was the master for a long time and I only merged my changes (from eg V2.03b) back to master on June 30th 2015.

Also note that I've now added instructions (in directory install) on how to create distributions of type setup.exe and portable.zip once you have managed to build Tarrasch.exe (for which, see below).

Rebuilding Tarrasch from the source code delivery package is not rocket science, but it probably will take some application and patience, even from experienced developers.

I have used Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Express as my C++ compiler and linker. The build package includes solution and project files generated by that version of Visual Studio.

It is also necessary to separately download, install and configure the open source WxWidgets GUI library.

I have been using V2.8.6 of this library since the inception of this project in mid 2008. It's installed in the default C:\wxWidgets-2.8.6 location. I haven't checked for more recent versions of WxWidgets. I don't expect problems if you do use a more recent version but I can't dismiss the possibility out of hand.

In the Tarrasch property pages, the configuration properties explicitly call out specific WxWidgets directories in the Include and Library directories parts of each of the C/C++, the linker and resources sections.

If you use a different version of Visual Studio or WxWidgets and you find that gives you problems, I suggest the following two part strategy;

1. Put aside the Tarrasch source code for a while and concentrate on building simple WxWidgets samples and demos. That process should be very well supported, and there is no chance you can build Tarrasch if you can't get that far at least.

2. Once you have confidence in your compiler + WxWidgets development environment, take a suitable demo and start introducing the Tarrasch source files. That basically mirrors the process that spawned Tarrasch in the first place. You should quickly be able to add all the existing source files and effectively you've grown a new Tarrasch solution. The only source files in the package that aren't part of the Tarrasch GUI are ToyEngine.cpp which is the root file in a separate console mode app (the toy engine) and BuildLookupTables.cpp which is the sole file of a separate console mode application to build GeneratedLookupTables.inc (which is included in the package, you don't need to build it yourself).

• VERY IMPORTANT * There is one really painful detail that you must get on top of. I have changed the Configuration Properties / C/C++ /Code Generation / Runtime Library field from its default Multi-threaded DLL to Multi-threaded. The reason is that otherwise you don't get a real fully static link. You want a real static link or your version of Tarrasch might fail on a PC with different DLL versions to yours. The catch is that YOU MUST MAKE THE SAME CHANGE IN THE WXWIDGETS LIBRARIES CONFIGURATION AND RECOMPILE THOSE TOO. If you don't you get annoying and otherwise inexplicable link errors. See my question on the programmers site stackoverflow.com for a little more background (search for my name).

My (admittedly primitive and rather pathetic) method of getting Pawel Koziol's icon to replace the standard wxWidget icon was to replace each of std.ico child.ico mdi.ico in directory; C:\wxWidgets-2.8.6\include\wx\msw
with a copy of tarrasch.ico as included in this repository. I can't remember much about this process, but no doubt I tried to do it in more rational ways without success.

The main problem with this (apart from the patheticness and primitiveness already alluded too) is that this tends to give every wxWidget app you subsequently create this inappropriate icon. No doubt a much better solution is possible.

Finally, I remember that Windows was reluctant to give up on using the standard wxWidgets icon for Tarrasch, it seemed to be cached deep in the OS somewhere, and would come back in vampire like fashion, at least for a while.