Games-Tournament-Swiss

What a mess 0.09 was! But 0.10 may be even worse. 

Warning!

This is ALPHA-level software. Although it attempts to implement the FIDE Swiss Rules, it may not pair players correctly. It may take over your computer, and force you to reboot. It may DELETE files. It may DESTROY your computer. Use at your own risk.

0.09 failed to apply even easy downfloating rules. The tests all passed, but the tests were no good, or at least, only testing a small part of what they need to test. More tests are needed. If you have an interesting pairing table that is difficult to pair, please report it as a bug at http://search.cpan.org/~drbean/Games-Tournament-Swiss/. The code to pair players applying varying relative criteria should now be better, but only one or two tests test it. So try to break Games::Tournament::Swiss and report your results!

This is a major revision. The major work in this version is a move from array-based indexing of the brackets to hash-based indexing. This makes it easier to handle remainder groups, the joining of the penultimate and final brackets, and the moving down of all players to the next bracket. The creation of the index to the bracket being paired on the fly, however, is not well tested, and is clunky. The developer needs to keep it up to date by hand. Other improvements were also made.

One good thing, I didn't get any cpan tester failures with 0.09. But they were all on Linux or BSD.

I recommend looking at the scripts. If you want some more help, look at the 
tests. Again, scripts are still likely to break, but the purpose of that is to get you to write your own scripts. (ha-ha) Look at the scripts and the tests.

This program is run from a shell. You need to work from a command line and type commands. It also depends on perl to run. If you don't know anything about perl, you will have to learn something about installing it and running scripts, before you can use this software.

For perl on Windows, try the free download of ActiveState's distribution at http://www.activestate.com/store/activeperl, or the experimental Strawberry Perl http://win32.perl.org/wiki/index.php?title=Strawberry_Perl

On other platforms, find it from your regular source for new packages.

INSTALLATION

This software doesn't install itself. To install this module, run the following commands:

    perl Build.PL		or		perl Makefile.PL
    ./Build					make
    ./Build test				make install
    ./Build install

make may be nmake or dmake on Windows. The tests will take a few minutes.

The distribution is made up of modules and scripts. The modules provide functionality that you can use to write your own tournament software. The scripts are an example of a swiss pairing program.

SCRIPTS

The scripts in script_files/ need to be installed somewhere so that they can be run in the directory in which pairing of each round is done.

DIRECTORY LAYOUT

The scripts assume that there is a directory in which a configuration file, called league.yaml, with data about the players exists. The rounds are paired in subdirectories, named 1,2,3,.. below this directory. Files named:

brackets.yaml  pairing.yaml  round.yaml
matches.yaml   player.yaml   tourney.yaml

are left in these subdirectories after pairing.

Scores are in another subdirectory called scores. They are of the form 1.yaml, 2.yaml,.. You need to create these files, if you use 'pairstately'.

You can create a pairing table with 'pairingtable,' convert it into YAML form with 'pairtable2yaml' and run 'pair.'

DATA FILES

Do not use tabs in these YAML files. The level of indentation is significant. Follow the examples closely. The first, league.yaml has lines of the form:

member:
  - id: 1
    name: Laver, Rod
    rating: 2810
    title: Grandmaster
  - id: 2
    name: Sampras, Pete
    rating: 2800
    title: Unknown
  - id: 3
    name: McEnroe, John
    rating: 2780
    title: Unknown

If you are using your own scoring scheme, and colors (called, roles), see the example below. You can add your own data to the member records. A pairing number is generated for the players, so don't add a pairing number.
TODO Configuration of your own scoring scheme looks like it is broken.

The score files: 1.yaml, etc, are of the form:

'Laver, Rod': Loss
'Sampras, Pete': Win
'McEnroe, John': Bye

First number is the name of the player. (Every name will have to be unique.) The second is the result for that player.

Alternatively,
1:
  - 'Laver, Rod': 0
  - 'Sampras, Pete': 1
2: 
  - 'McEnroe, John': -

A sample scoring scheme, abbreviations and roles in league.yaml could be:

scores:
  win: 1
  loss: 0.5
  draw: 0.75
  absent: 0
  bye: 1
abbreviation:
  W: White
  1: Win
  '=': Draw
roles:
  - White
  - Black

For the form of the pairing table and its YAML equivalent, see the documentation for 'pairtable2yaml.'

GENERATING PAIRINGS

Starting with an empty main directory, create league.yaml, and an empty subdirectory for the first round. Run the script, 'pair' in the empty round subdirectory. A log of the pairing is printed and 'round.yaml' in the directory contains the matches. After the games in the round are complete, in the scores subdirectory, enter the scores for the players in the file, '1.yaml', or whatever the round is. Then you can run 'crosstable 1' or 'pairingtable 1' in the original directory above the subdirectory, to get current standings. Convert your pairing table into YAML form with 'pairtable2yaml' and copy it into a subdirectory for the next round, and continue as before.

SUPPORT AND DOCUMENTATION

After installing, you can find documentation for this module with the perldoc command.

    perldoc Games::Tournament::Swiss

You can also look for information at:

    Search CPAN, for documentation and source:
        http://search.cpan.org/dist/Games-Tournament-Swiss

    CPAN Request Tracker (Report Bugs here):
        http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/Bugs.html?Dist=Games-Tournament-Swiss

    AnnoCPAN, annotated CPAN documentation:
        http://annocpan.org/dist/Games-Tournament-Swiss

    CPAN Ratings:
        http://cpanratings.perl.org/d/Games-Tournament-Swiss

COPYRIGHT AND LICENCE

Copyright (C) 2007 Dr Bean

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the same terms as Perl itself.
