This page concerns the ongoing development of GNU Go. If you are looking for the latest stable release you should go to the GNU Go main page.

• GNU Go 1.1 was posted to comp.sources.games March 13 1989. (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)
• GNU Go 1.2 was released sometime in 1995.
• Work resumed on GNU Go in October 1998.
• GNU Go 2.0 was released April 20, 1999.
• GNU Go 2.4 was released September 12, 1999.
• GNU Go 2.6 was released February 13, 2000.
• GNU Go 3.0 was released August 24, 2001.
• GNU Go 3.2 was released April 25, 2002.
• GNU Go 3.4 was released July 31, 2003.
• GNU Go 3.6 was released November 17, 2004.
• GNU Go 3.8 was released February 19, 2009.

GNU Go 3.0 is about four stones stronger than GNU Go 2.6.

GNU Go 3.2 is about as fast as GNU Go 3.0 but stronger.

GNU Go 3.4 is slightly slower than GNU Go 3.2 but stronger.

GNU Go 3.6 is stronger than GNU Go 3.4 by an undetermined amount.

GNU Go 3.8 is believed stronger than GNU Go 3.6.

GNU Go authors (in chronological order of contribution) are Man Lung Li, Wayne Iba, Daniel Bump, David Denholm, Gunnar Farnebäck, Nils Lohner, Jerome Dumonteil, Tommy Thorn, Nicklas Ekstrand, Inge Wallin, Thomas Traber, Douglas Ridgway, Teun Burgers, Tanguy Urvoy, Thien-Thi Nguyen, Heikki Levanto, Mark Vytlacil, Adriaan van Kessel, Wolfgang Manner, Jens Yllman, Don Dailey, Mans Ullerstam, Arend Bayer, Trevor Morris, Evan Berggren Daniel, Fernando Portela, Paul Pogonyshev, S.P. Lee, Stephane Nicolet, Martin Holters, and Grzegorz Leszczynski.

Here is a GNU Go task list. Contact us if you are interested in helping the development of GNU Go.

You can download GNU Go development versions here, see below. Versions with an even revision number (2.0, 2.4, 3.0.x, ...) are considered stable. The latest stable version is GNU Go 3.8, which can be found at ftp.gnu.org and its mirrors. (Mirroring may take a day or two to propogate.) Versions with an odd revision number (2.3.63, 2.5.4, 3.1.x, ...) are development versions. They are not mirrored at ftp.gnu.org.

Untar the sources and consult the file README. Details of the changes is contained in ChangeLog (updated with each release).

• Versions in the 2.5 line. This is an archive of the Lysator versions of GNU Go, through 2.7.161.
• Versions in the 3.1 line.
• Development versions from the 3.3 line
• Development versions from the 3.5 line

All versions since 3.0 are in the Git repository. (See below.)

For the very latest source code you can checkout the Git repository with the command:

git clone git://git.savannah.gnu.org/gnugo.git

You can also browse the repository.

Want GNU Go 3.7.5? Once you have the repository you can git checkout rel-3-7-5; configure; make.

• The git repository is descended from the cvs repository and contains all versions and all commits since 3.0.0 (September 2001).
• Git checkout instantly populates your directory with the files of the desired version from your local repository.
• Try gitk --all to view the complete development tree.
• Older versions may require some tweaking to build with current gcc.
• If you build one version then git checkout another you may want to make distclean to remove unwanted object files before rebuilding.

• See GNU Go 3.6. Here's the patch relative to gnugo-3.6-pre4. November 17, 2004.
• gnugo-3.7.1.tar.gz. Here's the patch relative to gnugo-3.6-pre4. November 23, 2004.
• gnugo-3.7.2.tar.gz. Here's the patch relative to gnugo-3.7.1. January 20, 2005.
• gnugo-3.7.3.tar.gz. Here's the patch relative to gnugo-3.7.2. March 22, 2005.
• gnugo-3.7.4.tar.gz. Here's the patch relative to gnugo-3.7.3. June 12, 2005.
• gnugo-3.7.5.tar.gz. Here's the patch relative to gnugo-3.7.4. September 20, 2005.
• gnugo-3.7.6.tar.gz. Here's the patch relative to gnugo-3.7.5. September 21, 2005. Same engine as gnugo-3.7.5. Restores a few missing test files, and revises the .dsp files for VC++ builds.
• gnugo-3.7.7.tar.gz. Here's the patch relative to gnugo-3.7.6. October 9, 2005.
• gnugo-3.7.8.tar.gz. Here's the patch relative to gnugo-3.7.7. January 30, 2006.
• gnugo-3.7.9.tar.gz. Here's the patch relative to gnugo-3.7.8. March 10, 2006.
• gnugo-3.7.10.tar.gz. Here's the patch relative to gnugo-3.7.9. May 22, 2006.
• gnugo-3.7.11.tar.gz. Here's the patch relative to gnugo-3.7.10. November 1, 2007. GPL 3. CVS tag rel-3-7-11.
• gnugo-3.7.12.tar.gz. Here's the patch relative to gnugo-3.7.11. April 12, 2008. CVS tag rel-3-7-12.
• gnugo-3.7.13.tar.gz. Here's the patch relative to gnugo-3.7.12. December 23, 2008. This is a beta for the next "official" release GNU Go 3.8. We need help with the windows build. See This message for details.
• gnugo-3.8rc2.tar.gz. Here's the patch relative to gnugo-3.7.13. February 15, 2009. This is the GNU Go 3.8 release candidate. Supercedes gnugo-3.8rc1 which was missing 2 files in the tarball.
• GNU Go 3.8 is available at ftp.gnu.org.
• gnugo-3.9.1.tar.gz. December 21, 2010. Git tag rel-3-9-1.

Current versions of GNU Go implement a text based protocol (GTP) which could potentially replace the GMP. We recommend everyone who intends to write an interface to GNU Go to use GTP. Part of the code in GNU Go implementing the GTP interface is available under a less restrictive license so that it can be reused by other engine authors planning to implement GTP. For further information, we refer to the official GTP web page.

Send inquiries and bug reports to [email protected].