v1.5.0

---

[1.5.0] - 2025-02-07

This release is focused on addressing the performance issues caused by multicast_expert rescanning the network interfaces on the machine each time a socket is opened. You can now avoid this overhead by using the new scan functions and then passing their result into the socket constructors' iface argument.

Added

• multicast_expert.scan_interfaces() provides a more complete wrapper around netifaces It will scan all the interface details from the machine into a list of IfaceInfo dataclass objects.
• multicast_expert.find_interfaces() provides an easy way to locate interfaces matching a given specifier. The specifier may be an IPv4 or IPv6 address of the interface (as a string or an object), or an interface name (e.g. eth0).

Changed

• McastTxSocket and McastRxSocket now accept an IfaceSpecifier for their interface IP arguments instead of just an IP address string. This is compatible with old usage but allows a wider range of values to be used, including an interface obtained from scan_interfaces() or find_interfaces().
• McastTxSocket and McastRxSocket now accept IPv4Address and IPv6Address objects in addition to strings for the mcast_ips and source_ips constructor arguments.
  • Note that the sendto() and recvfrom() functions still accept and return only string addresses, as this matches the behavior of the socket module (surprisingly).

Fixed

• It is now possible to unambiguously open a socket on an interface that has the same IP as another interface (in most cases). Previously, it was undefined which interface you'd get if this happened.
• It is now possible to open a McastRxSocket socket on a machine with interfaces with multiple IPs. This previously crashed unless you explicitly specified one interface to use.