******** introduction ********
Welcome to the project of translating Stockfish in assembly language!
The newest executables can be found in the master branch while executables from older versions are in branch "executables".
The source files can be found in the asmFish folder on the master branch.
  - run fasm on asmFishW_base[_popcnt,_bmi2].asm to produce executables for windows
  - run fasm on asmFishL_base[_popcnt,_bmi2].asm to produce executables for linux
For more information on this project see the asmFish/asmReadMe.txt.
Run make.bat to automatically assemble the windows/linux sources for the three capabilities
  - base: should run on any 64bit x86 cpu
  - popcnt: generate popcnt instruction
  - bmi2: use instructions introduced in haswell
Besides the three cpu capabilities, this project now comes in two flavours
  - asmFish: trim off the cruft in official stockfish and make a lean and mean chess engine
  - pedantFish: match bench signature of official stockfish to catch search/eval bugs more easily
More flavors are planned for the future, including mateFish and hybridFish (provided Mohammed takes up the project again).
  
If you observe a crash/misbehaviour in asmFish, please raise an issue here and give me the following information:
  - name of the executable that crashed/misbehaved
  - exception code and exception offset in the case of a crash
  - a log of the commands that were sent to asmFish by your gui before the crash
Simply stating that asmFish crashed in your gui is useless information by itself.
asmFish is known to have problems in the fritz15 gui, while it plays much better in the fritz11 gui.
Any help with this issue would be appreciated.


******** FAQ ********
Q: Why not just start with the compiler output and speed up the critical functions?
   or write critical functions in asm and include them in cpp code?
A: With this approach the critical functions would still need to conform to the standards
   set in place by the ABI. All of the critical functions in asmFish do not conform to these
   standards. Plus, asmFish would be dependent on a compiler in this case, which introduces
   many unnecessary compilcations. Both asmFish and its assembler are around 100KB; lets keep
   it simple. Note that compiler output was used in the case of Ronald de Man's syzygy
   probing code, as this is not speed critical but cumbersome to write by hand.

Q: Is asmFish the same as official stockfish?
A: It is 99.9% official stockfish as there are some inconsequential functional differences in 
   official that were deemed too silly to put into asmFish. Piece lists are the prime offender
   here. You can get 100% official stockfish in deterministic searches by setting
   PEDANTIC equ 1 compile option. The changes can be viewed at
   https://github.com/lantonov/asmFish/search?q=PEDANTIC
   
Q: Where can I find the executable files of the old versions ?
A: All older versions of asmFish/pedantFish are in the branch https://github.com/lantonov/asmFish/tree/executables


******** updates ********
For a change log, see the Wiki https://github.com/lantonov/asmFish/wiki/Change-log