September 28, 2005

------------------

Compared to the previous official snapshot (November 2004) the 

current version of oscpack includes a re-written set of network 

classes and some changes to the syntax of the networking code. It no 

longer uses threads, which means that you don't need to use sleep() 

if you are writing a simple single-threaded server, or you need to 

spawn your own threads in a more complex application.

The list below summarises the changes if you are porting code from 

the previous release.

    - there are no longer any threads in oscpack. if you need to 

    set up an asynchronous listener you can create your own thread 

    and call Run on an instance of SocketReceiveMultiplexer or 

    UdpListeningReceiveSocket (see ip/UdpSocket.h) yourself.

    - host byte order is now used for network (IP) addresses

    - functions which used to take two parameters <address, port> 

    now take an instance of IpEndpointName (see 

    ip/IpEndpointName.h) this class has a number of convenient 

    constructors for converting numbers and strings to internet 

    addresses. For example there is one which takes a string and 

    another that take the dotted address components as separate 

    parameters.

    - The UdpTransmitPort class, formerly in UdpTransmitPort.h, is 

    now called UdpTransmitSocket, which is simply a convenience 

    class derived from UdpSocket (see ip/UdpSocket.h). Where you 

    used to use the constructor UdpTransmitPort( address, port) now 

    you can use UdpTransmitSocket( IpEndpointName( address, port ) 

    ) or you can any of the other possible ctors to IpEndpointName

    () (see above). The Send() method is unchanged.

    - The packet listener base class is now located in 

    ip/PacketListener.h instead of PacketListenerPort.h. The 

    ProcessPacket method now has an additional parameter indicating 

    the remote endpoint

    - The preferred way to set up listeners is with 

    SocketReceiveMultiplexer (in ip/UdpSocket.h), this also allows 

    attaching periodic timers. For simple applications which only 

    listen to a single socket with no timers you can use 

    UdpListeningReceiveSocket (also in UdpSocket.h) See 

    osc/OscReceiveTest.cpp or osc/OscDump.cpp for examples of this. 

    This is more or less equivalent to the UdpPacketListenerPort 

    object in the old oscpack versions except that you need to 

    explicitly call Run() before it will start receiving packets 

    and it runs in the same thread, not a separate thread so Run() 

    won't usually return.

    - Explicit calls to InitializeNetworking() and 

    TerminateNetworking() are no longer required for simple 

    applications (more complex windows applications should 

    instantiate NetworkInitializer in main() or WinMain (see 

    ip/NetworkingUtils.h/.cpp)

    - The OscPacketListener base class (OscPacketListener.h) was 

    added to make traversing OSC packets easier, it handles bundle 

    traversal automatically so you only need to process messages in 

    your derived classes.

    - On Windows be sure to link with ws2_32.lib or you will see

    a linker error about WSAEventSelect not being found. Also you 

    will need to link with winmm.lib for timeGetTime()