Chess

This repository contains game-engine and client - a UI made in React for playing single player chess games.

⚙️ Setup

Prerequisites:

• NodeJS
• npm (comes installed with NodeJS)
• PostgreSQL
• pgAdmin
• Insomnia REST API Client

Tool Versions	Node.js	npm
Supported (variant 1)	24.1.0	11.3.0
Supported (variant 2)	18.20.8	8.20.8

# Installs dependencies for all workspaces (client, server, game-engine, shared)
npm i

Setup pgAdmin and PostgreSQL (described in detail in Server's Readme)

Monorepo and linking local packages

This repo is a single npm project with workspaces (see workspaces in the root package.json). The folders client, server, game-engine, and shared are separate packages, but one npm i at the repository root installs and wires them together.

How local packages are connected (no npm link)

Previously, client and server depended on game-engine and chess-shared through npm link and a postinstall script. That is no longer used.

Instead, npm workspaces resolve in-repo dependencies by package name:

Package	package.json name	Used by
shared/	chess-shared	client, server
game-engine/	game-engine	client, server

In client/package.json and server/package.json those dependencies look like:

"chess-shared": "*",
"game-engine": "*"

The * range means: use the workspace copy with the same name from this repository, not a version from the npm registry. After npm i, npm creates workspace links (you will see "link": true for these packages in package-lock.json). No extra script runs after install.

What you get in practice:

• Changes under shared/ or game-engine/ are visible to client and server immediately (same as with global npm link, but scoped to this repo).
• One shared node_modules tree at the root (hoisting), fewer duplicate installs.
• No manual npm link / npm unlink steps and no postinstall hook.

Requirements: run npm i only from the repository root, not separately inside client/ or server/ (unless you know you need an isolated install). Workspace wiring is defined at the root.

If you change only TypeScript sources in game-engine or shared, a restart of the dev server is usually enough. If you change game-engine build output or its package.json main field, run npm run build:engine (or npm run build -w game-engine) so consumers that rely on the compiled build/ folder stay in sync.

Running commands in a workspace from the root

Root scripts use npm’s -w / --workspace flag instead of cd into each folder, for example:

npm start -w client          # same as npm run start from root
npm test -w game-engine
npm run build -w game-engine

You can also pass -w yourself when invoking any script defined in a workspace package.json.

Available npm scripts

• 🚀 start: runs the client application on http://localhost:5173 (if available)
• 🚀 start:server: runs the server application on http://localhost:3000 (if available)
• 📦 build: builds all packages (for deployment, not required for local development)
• 🧽 cleanup: clears all generated/built/installed content (such as /coverage, /dist, /node_modules)
• 🧪 test: runs the tests in all repositories (todo: make it work for e2e server tests too)
• 🧪 test:watch: same as above but in watch mode
• 🧪 test:coverage: runs all tests, produces coverage (open coverage\lcov-report\index.html in the browser to see the results)

🚧 Work progress

Repository	Progress	Comments
game-engine	🟩🟩🟩🟩⬛⬛	core logic is mostly implemented, performance can be improved, missing draw by agreement, no clocks, bots are too easy
client	🟩🟩🟩🟩⬛⬛	game engine is implemented, both sides are playable, but there are responsivness issues
server	🟩⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛	lobby creation, a few unrefined endpoints, makinvg moves works, insomnia collection, some tests

Preview