network-uci-bridge

Bridge to a network UCI engine for chess GUIs that support only a local binary

Chess GUI <- exec -> uci-bridge (binary) <- network connection -> UCI engine

Usage

At the moment, compiled binaries are available from the prebuilt docker images.

ghcr.io/n0rthernl1ghts/uci-bridge:latest

Example usage within your own Dockerfile:

FROM scratch AS rootfs

# Copy compiled binary from the image
COPY --from=ghcr.io/n0rthernl1ghts/uci-bridge:latest ["/usr/local/bin/uci-bridge", "/usr/local/bin/"]


FROM alpine:3.18 AS my-chess-gui

COPY --from=rootfs ["/", "/"]

(...)

CLI Usage:

echo "isready" | docker run --init --rm -e "UCI_TCP_HOST=192.168.1.20" -e "UCI_TCP_PORT=3333" -i ghcr.io/n0rthernl1ghts/uci-bridge:latest

If everything is working correctly, you should see readyok response from the engine.
The same applies to any other UCI command.

Environment variables

Configuration is very simple and done via environment variables.

UCI_TCP_HOST=uci-engine.example.com
UCI_TCP_PORT=3333

When running outside docker environment, you can use .env file to set environment variables.
You can also export them to the environment or run command like this:

echo "isready" | UCI_TCP_HOST=uci-engine.example.com UCI_TCP_PORT=3333 uci-bridge

Project status

This project is in early development stage. As is, it should be considered experimental.