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Subject: Re: How stable is stable enough for you?

Author: Matthias Gemuh

Date: 06:23:33 07/24/03

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On July 24, 2003 at 03:09:52, Albert Bertilsson wrote:

>After tracing a bug in Sharper for over a week I was starting to loose hope...
>A ran 600 games with a debug version, no problem.
>Switched to release version, after 579 games the bastard hanged =(.
>
>Would you consider releasing this engine version bad policy?
>
>Have you any known bug in your engine that you simply do not care about because
>it occurs very rarely?
>
>I realize that it will not be easier to find the bug later, it's just that I
>don't have the stamina to try and reproduce it again with the debug version, it
>can take thousands of games =(
>
>As I write Sharper mainly to let it compete against other engines I have no
>problem with giving away that one point in a thousand games, but I wouldn't like
>to see Sharper excluded from tournaments because it's buggy.
>
>/Regards Albert



What is "lost" in a crash is not only a tournament point, but possibly data
on user's computer. If I read that my engine crashed somewhere, I feel like
I have stabbed somebody in the back.

I debug "crashes" by comparing updated vs. newly generated hash keys at several
key points. I also compare lists of moves (in search) generated in 2 different
ways.

/Matthias.







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