Quick Start

This guide shows three small ways to consume an installed libscid release: direct cc, a simple Makefile, and CMake.

The examples use a local installation directory named install/libscid. See Installation if libscid is not installed yet.

Example Program

Create main.c:

#include <scid/scid.h>
 
#include <stdio.h>
 
int
main(void)
{
    const char* standard_fen = "rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/"
                               "RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1";
    scid_position* position = NULL;
    int is_start = 0;
 
    if (scid_position_create_from_fen(standard_fen, &position) != SCID_OK)
    {
        return 1;
    }
 
    if (scid_position_is_start(position, &is_start) != SCID_OK)
    {
        scid_position_free(position);
        return 1;
    }
 
    scid_position_free(position);
 
    if (!is_start)
    {
        return 1;
    }
 
    puts("libscid is available");
    return 0;
}

The public header is scid/scid.h, and the installed CMake target is LibScid::LibScid.

PGN Workflow

The PGN-facing game API is built from a few foundational calls:

• Create a start position with scid_position_create_from_fen().
• Create a blank game with scid_game_create_blank() or parse moves and tags with scid_game_create().
• Create a scid_game_cursor from the game. Cursor navigation is immutable: functions such as scid_game_cursor_next() return a new cursor through an out_... parameter.
• Edit the game at a cursor, or merge another game's moves with scid_game_merge_moves().
• Export with scid_game_to_pgn(game, options, ...). Pass NULL for the default complete PGN export, or pass a scid_game_pgn_options object to control symbolic NAGs, supplemental tags, comments, variations and line width.

See Examples and Recipes for complete programs that parse, author, navigate, mutate and export PGN.

With cc

cc -std=c11 \
    -I install/libscid/include \
    main.c \
    -L install/libscid/lib \
    -Wl,-rpath,install/libscid/lib \
    -lscid \
    -o libscid-hello
 
./libscid-hello

For a non-standard install prefix, replace install/libscid with the directory where the release archive was extracted or where cmake --install installed the library.

With Make

Create Makefile:

CC ?= cc
LIBSCID_PREFIX ?= install/libscid
 
CFLAGS += -std=c11 -I$(LIBSCID_PREFIX)/include
LDFLAGS += -L$(LIBSCID_PREFIX)/lib -Wl,-rpath,$(LIBSCID_PREFIX)/lib
LDLIBS += -lscid
 
libscid-hello: main.c
    $(CC) $(CFLAGS) $< $(LDFLAGS) $(LDLIBS) -o $@
 
.PHONY: clean
clean:
    rm -f libscid-hello

Build and run:

make
./libscid-hello

Use make LIBSCID_PREFIX=/path/to/libscid if libscid is installed somewhere else.

With CMake

Create CMakeLists.txt:

cmake_minimum_required( VERSION 3.23 )
 
project( libscid-hello LANGUAGES C )
 
find_package( libscid CONFIG REQUIRED )
 
add_executable( libscid-hello main.c )
set_target_properties(
    libscid-hello
    PROPERTIES
        C_STANDARD 11
        C_STANDARD_REQUIRED ON
        C_EXTENSIONS OFF )
target_link_libraries( libscid-hello PRIVATE LibScid::LibScid )

Configure, build and run:

cmake -S . -B _build -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=install/libscid
cmake --build _build
./_build/libscid-hello