blooto -- Chess composition solver

This is C++ class library for solving chess composition problems.

Building

These build instructions assume that you have Linux or other Unix-like operating system.

You need the following prerequisites to build blooto:

• C++ compiler (tested with GCC);
• Boost C++ libraries;
• cmake;
• make or any other build system cmake supports (tested with GNU Make);
• doxygen (optional).

Once you've extracted source archive or checked out git repository, enter the directory with sources and perform the following commands there.

It's a good practice to build in a seperate directory. For example, you can create a subdirectory called build and use it as your build directory.

mkdir build
cd build

After you created and entered your build directory, you can start build process there.

cmake ..
make

If everything works correctly, you'll get the following results:

• blooto library in lib subdirectory,
• blooto program in utils subdirectory,
• unit tests in tests subdirectory.

Running tests

Run the following command in your build directory.

ctest

Solving problems

The blooto utility in utils subdirectory of your build directory can solve chess composition problems.

Run ./utils/blooto --help for list of its command line options.

Example: directmate

The command

./utils/blooto -d 2 -b 'White Kf8 Rh1 Pg6 Black Kh8 Bg8 Pg7 Ph7'

solves directmate problem with 2 moves.

The -d option specifies thet the type of problem to solve is directmate. Its argument is number of full moves.

The -b option specifies initial board content for the problem. If -b option is omited, board content is read from standard input.

The expected output of this problem's solution is following.

Rh1-h6
        Pg7*h6
                Pg6-g7
        Bg8-a2
                Rh6*h7
        Bg8-b3
                Rh6*h7
        Bg8-c4
                Rh6*h7
        Bg8-d5
                Rh6*h7
        Bg8-e6
                Rh6*h7
        Bg8-f7
                Rh6*h7

Example: helpmate

The command

./utils/blooto -h 2 -b 'White Kf3 Re5 Bf8 Ba4 Black Kf6 Pf7 Pd6'

solves helpmate problem with 2 moves.

The -h option specifies thet the type of problem to solve is helpmate. Its argument is number of full moves.

The -b option specifies initial board content for the problem. If -b option is omited, board content is read from standard input.

The expected output of this problem's solution is following.

Kf6*e5
        Ba4-b3
                Pf7-f5
                        Bf8-g7
Kf6-g6
        Re5-h5
                Pf7-f6
                        Ba4-e8

The same composition can be solved with a different stipulation: helpmate with one full move and additional half-move, using the following command:

./utils/blooto --helpmate+1 1 -b 'White Ph2 Rg3 Ka5 Bb5 Pe7 Black Pe2 Kf2 Qc5 Pe5 Rf7'

The --helpmate+1 option specifies thet the type of problem to solve is helpmate with additional half-move. Its argument is number of full moves.

The expected output of this problem's solution is following.

Pe7-e8=Q
        Pe2-e1=R
                Qe8*f7

Library

The blooto utility is just a simple wrapper program. All problem solving logic is inside blooto library.

Although doxygen dependency is optional, it's highly recommended to generate library API documentation.

If you have doxygen installed, you'll get HTML documentation in doc/html subdirectory of your build directory as a result of build process.