[PD-dev] mrpeach/tcpserver one last lingering bug

[Martin Peach]

Ivica Ico Bukvic wrote:
> Martin,
> 
...
> please send me a brief flow of functions "broadcast" calls so that I can figure out where to look for potential fixes/improvements.

Well broadcast calls tcpserver_send_bytes() once for each connected client.
tcpserver_send_bytes() fills a buffer from the input message and spawns 
a thread running tcpserver_send_buf_thread() to send the content 
whenever the buffer is full or the message is completely converted from 
atoms to bytes.

I think as long as your messages all fit in a single buffer it's a lot 
easier. The snag is that tcpserver_send_bytes() can fill the buffer more 
than once for each message if the message is > 64k.
Apart from that, to skip redundant conversion of atom to byte and 
multiple thread creation, I would make a single buffer from the input 
and pass it to a single thread that sends the same buffer to each 
connected client.
Since the current tcpserver_send_bytes() can also be used to send very 
long files, it may be better to make a dedicated broadcast function that 
only does small packets (less than 65536 bytes), as broadcasting 
megabytes to many clients will no doubt peg the machine.

Martin