[Scidvspc-users] Packaging ScidVsPC for Debian?

[Aljoscha L. <alj...@gm...>]

Hi,

a few months ago I started to use Scid, because it is the only chess
DB that is packaged for Debian. I am a correspondence chess (CC)
player, so I have some rather specific needs and use cases.
I used Chessbase for my CC games for more than 15 years, but I
recently deleted the Windows VM from my computer. I only kept Windows
around for my chess programs.

Scid works quite well in general, but it has a lot of bugs and the
user interface leaves much to be desired. So I started to look into
helping out with the development since I'm a software engineer myself.
However, when I looked into the issue, I realized that Scid is not
really actively developed anymore, but that there are other projects
such as ScidVsPC or Chess DB that are quite active. Unfortunately none
of them are packaged for Debian.

So instead of helping with development, I was thinking I should try to
packge ScidVsPC for Debian. Are there any objections from the author?
It would probably take several months to get it into Debian anyway,
and it definitely will not be part of the next release, because the
release freeze has been in effect for quite a while already. Packaging
it for Debian would also mean that, over time, it would automatically
transition into Ubuntu (and other Debian derivatives).
Please note that I am currently not affiliated with either Debian or
Ubuntu, I am just a long time user who has a good grasp of what is
going on in their respective development communities.

Just out of curiosity, are you aware of any packaging of ScidVsPC for
other distributions?


I have not actually used ScidVsPC much yet, but based on a short check
it seems to be in much better shape than Scid.
However, I have some usability questions:

It seems that ScidVsPC is not compatible with Scid's si4 DB format, is
that correct? So if I would want to step over from Scid, I first have
to export my DB as PGN, and then import it into ScidVsPC?

And one thing that has been bothering me quite a bit when I tested it,
is that I could not dock the different windows into one (i.e. that the
pgn, gamelist and board windows are separate). Did I just not figure
out how to combine the windows, or are they kept separate on purpose?
I really don't like these kind of scattered applications, and it is
something that works (reasonably) well in Scid.


Finally, thank you for your work on ScidVsPC and keep up the good
work! it is certainly appreciated. :)

Kind regards,
Aljoscha Lautenbach