The usual procedure should apply. After you have unpacked the sources, type (in the sources top-level directory) ./configure make You may also pass several other options such as compiler options to configure, just type ./configure --help for advice. In particular, you may experiment with compiler optimization flags, which are added easily as (assuming you have a bourne-type shell) CFLAGS="-O3 -ffast-math" ./configure The build should work with gcc, it also works with the Sun Workshop compiler and maybe others. Test gnuchess by typing ./gnuchess.exe (or ./gnuchess on Linux/Unix) easy new post depth 8 go quit You should see an 8-ply search. Most machines these days should finish it within a few seconds. If not, Control-C out, and do depth 6 go quit instead. If you got this far, congratulations. If you want to install the software in some global directory, by default /usr/local, become root and type make install If you want to install the sources in some other directory than /usr/local, replace the first line by ./configure --prefix=/my/favourite/dir You can build an opening book which may enhance the value of gnuchess quite a lot. In order to do so, get the file book.pgn (see book/README for instructions on how to get it) and type the following. ln -s ../book/book.pgn ./gnuchess book add book.pgn quit This may take some minutes, depending on the speed of your machines. The book is quite large (180,000 master games). If you want a smaller book or you do not want to wait, do the following instead: head -30000 ../book/book.pgn > smallbook.pgn ./gnuchess book add smallbook.pgn quit This will make a much smaller book. Original Author: Stuart Cracraft Laguna Niguel, CA March, 2001 Modifications: Lukas Geyer Simon Waters