Professional chess graphical interface, written entirely in Rust.
Vendetta Chess GUI contains no internal chess engine: it is a full UCI client, designed to drive one or more external engines (Stockfish, Leela, etc.), analyze games, manage a library of games and openings, organize engine tournaments, and serve as a training tool — from beginner to seasoned player, all within a single interface.
- Full UCI protocol: launching, configuration, multi-engine management.
- Real-time analysis with MultiPV support (several simultaneous lines).
- Evaluation bar and graph, engine comparison.
- Engine tournaments (round-robin, gauntlet) with stored results.
- Dedicated "hint" engine, independent of the main analysis engine.
- Interactive board (click and drag-and-drop), SVG rendering.
- Full history with PGN variations, comments, and NAG annotations
(
!!,!,!?,?!,?,??). - Syntax-highlighted moves in the history: captures, castling, promotion, check, and checkmate each get their own color.
- Highlighting of a king in check (pulsing square) and a dedicated checkmate animation.
- Assist mode: tactical badges (capture risk, check, mate) on the target squares of a selected piece — can be disabled, designed for beginners without forcing a separate mode.
- PGN, FEN, and EPD import/export; visual position editor.
- PDF export of a game (printing).
- Captured pieces displayed in real time.
- Full time-control management: classic, Fischer, Bronstein.
- Import large reference game collections from PGN or SCID (
.si4and.si5) files — e.g. Lumbra's Gigabase — as two independent sources (importing or clearing one never touches the other). - Full-screen browser to search your reference database: filters by player, Elo range, date range, and ECO opening code, with pagination.
- Interactive opening tree: candidate moves with live statistics (games played, win rates), drill-down move by move, jump straight to the games behind any branch.
- On-demand analysis of any reference game: quick or deep engine pass, evaluation curve, live preview board with ply navigation, PGN/PNG export, FEN copy/paste.
- Start a new game directly from a position picked in the reference database, alongside the position editor and PGN loading.
- Move comments and NAG annotations (
!!,!,!?,?!,?,??) from imported databases are decoded and preserved.
- Local SQLite database: games, positions, analyses, tournaments.
- Opening library (Polyglot book).
- Fully portable installation (self-contained folder, usable from a USB drive).
- Puzzle mode with a dedicated database and progress tracking.
- Interface available in 40 languages, hot-switchable without a restart.
- All user-facing strings go through the central translation system
(
crates/i18n) — adding a language requires no code changes.
Multi-crate Rust workspace, with strict separation of concerns:
| Crate | Role |
|---|---|
core |
Pure chess logic: board, legal moves, rules, PGN/FEN. |
uci |
Communication with external engines (UCI protocol). |
engine |
Lifecycle management of engine processes (multi-engine pool). |
analysis |
MultiPV aggregation, engine comparison, evaluation graphs. |
db |
SQLite persistence (games, positions, analyses, tournaments, puzzles, reference databases). |
scid |
Readers for the SCID database format (.si4/.si5 index and name files, move blob decoding). |
tournament |
Engine tournament organization (round-robin, gauntlet). |
network |
LAN multiplayer — in progress (see Roadmap). |
game_config |
Game configuration (color, time control, engines involved). |
i18n |
Translations (40 languages) and the central translation function. |
app_paths |
Path resolution for the portable installation. |
gui |
User interface (Slint) and overall orchestration. |
There is no direct coupling between the UI and the engines: everything goes
through dedicated services (engine, analysis, db).
Tech stack: Rust (2021 edition), Slint for the
interface, SQLite for persistence. unsafe is forbidden except for
documented, critical justification.
- Rust stable (toolchain via
rustup). - One or more UCI engines (e.g. Stockfish), not bundled with the software.
git clone https://github.com/Fab2bprog/Rust-Vendetta-Chess-GUI.git
cd vendetta_chess_gui
cargo build --releaseThe resulting binary (target/release/vendetta-chess-gui) is self-contained and
relocatable; the software automatically recreates the data folder
structure it needs on first launch (see Quick Start).
A ready-to-use .desktop file is provided in
crates/gui/linux/README.md, along with
user and system installation instructions.
On first launch, Vendetta Chess GUI creates a VendettaChess/ folder next
to the executable (portable installation, no writes elsewhere on the
system):
VendettaChess/
├── parametres/ preferences, configured engines, saved games
├── base/ SQLite database (games, analyses, tournaments, puzzles)
├── moteurs/ detected/installed UCI engine executables
├── ouvertures/ Polyglot opening book
└── logs/ logging
This folder can be copied as-is (e.g. onto a USB drive) to carry its entire configuration and data over to another machine.
The project enforces strict quality rules, checked in continuous
integration (.github/workflows):
cargo check --all-targets --all-features
cargo fmt --all -- --check
cargo clippy --all-targets --all-features -- -D warnings -D clippy::all -D clippy::pedantic
cargo test --all-featuresCompiler warnings are treated as errors (RUSTFLAGS="-D warnings"),
including clippy in pedantic mode.
Want to contribute? See CONTRIBUTING.md for the full
guide, and docs/ for deeper architecture and design notes.
Features from the specification that are still incomplete:
- LAN multiplayer — automatic discovery (mDNS), host/client mode,
FEN-based synchronization, built-in chat. The
networkcrate is in place but not yet implemented. - Piece themes — only one SVG piece set is currently available; the classic Staunton style and an alternative modern style are still to be added.
- Automatic game report — NAG annotations (
!!/?/??...) are currently assigned manually; an automatic analysis pass comparing the evaluation before/after each move does not yet exist.
Distributed under the GPLv3 license.