[LAA] JACK 0.120.1 is released

[Paul Davis]

    http://jackaudio.org/downloads/jack-audio-connection-kit-0.120.1.tar.gz

JACK 0.120.1 represents more than a year of incremental development on
JACK1. The majority of the work has been done by Torben Hohn, and
includes one major API revision and one major API addition, along with
a quite a few other fixes, API clarifications and new utilities.

The addition is the new Session API that allows for easy management
(save/restore) of multi-client configurations. The core JACK release
does not include a session management application, but QJackctl
already offers this. The session API has already been implemented in
Jack2. Please see below for links to read about this API.

The revision involves the API used to manage and discover latency in
JACK signal flow, and unlike the existing one (now marked as
deprecated)), this one can actually do what it needs to do. Anyone who
has written a client that used the existing port latency API should
update their client to use the new one: the old API will be removed
when we move to API/protocol version 1.0.0 which will be soon.

Please note that the latency API has not been implemented in Jack2 at
this time.

Usage Changes
=============

    * add -M command line flag to allow user-specified MIDI buffer
      sizing The units of the argument to this command line flag are
      "MIDI events per process() cycle", where an event occupies up to
      4 bytes (as most common MIDI events do). The default buffer size
      is same as the one used for audio data, which will store about 2
      MIDI events per sample. Typical values for event-count will
      range from 10 to about 500. Be aware that using very high values
      along with a large number of ports may cause JACK to fail to
      start because of the amount of memory that would be required.

    * several new utility clients:
          - jack_midi_dump (Carl Hetherington) (displays MIDI events
              arriving at its input port as text in its
              originating terminal window)
          - jack_iodelay (from the original jdelay in C++ by Fons
              Adriensen; ported to C by Torben Hohn)
          - jack_latent_client (for testing latency API)
          - jack_session_notify (a minimal session manager)

Developer-visible Changes
=========================

Applications can now request weak linkage for all function symbols in
the JACK API.

See http://jackaudio.org/files/docs/html/group__WeakLinkage.html for more
information.

Using Port Buffers before activating a client
---------------------------------------------

It has always been undefined behaviour to try to use JACK port buffers
outside of a process callback. This release adds an additional
limitation: any call to jack_port_get_buffer() before jack_activate()
will return NULL rather than a usable address. This may cause issues
in clients which did this - the behaviour was always wrong, but was
not enforced by JACK.

Determining and tracking port buffer sizes
-------------------------------------------

A few details about detecting the port buffer sizes have changed:

    * clients should now use jack_port_type_get_buffer_size() if they
      absolutely must determine buffer sizes before they call
      jack_activate(). The use of jack_port_get_buffer_size() before
      calling jack_activate() is now forbidden and may result in the
      client crashing.

    * clients that care about port buffer sizes should register a
      buffer size callback. The callback will now always be executed
      during a call to jack_activate(). This ensures that on return
      from jack_activate() and before the first call to its process
      callback, the client definitely knows the buffer size. Future
      callbacks will occur if the buffer size changes. Note that older
      versions of JACK do not necessarily call the buffer size
      callback during jack_activate() - this behaviour should be
      considered a serious bug in JACK and another reason to upgrade.

Session API
------------

JACK Session is a new section of the JACK API that is designed to
allow management of JACK configurations that involve multiple
clients. Use of the API is optional by clients, but is strongly
recommended.

The API is fully documented online:

    * API Reference:
http://jackaudio.org/files/docs/html/group__SessionClientFunctions.html
    * Walkthrough for client developers:
http://trac.jackaudio.org/wiki/WalkThrough/Dev/JackSession

Latency API
------------

The older latency management API is now deprecated because it was
fundamentally broken (in the sense that it could not do what it
claimed to be able to do)

The new API is fully documented online

    * API Reference:
http://jackaudio.org/files/docs/html/group__LatencyFunctions.html
    * Conceptual diagram: http://jackaudio.org/files/jack-latency.png

All relevant included clients and backends have beem updated to use it.

Bug Fixes, Tweaks Etc. Etc
==========================
    * switch all example clients and tools to use jack_client_open()
    * README emptied to just point at http://jackaudio.org/
    * replace use of pthread_t in public headers with jack_native_thread_t
    * offer build time option to make code 100% valgrind clean
    * shm.c released under LGPL, not GPL, to match the rest of libjack
    * fixes for rare crashes in alsa_in/out
    * netjack1 support for Celt 0.9
    * check arguments given to jack_bufsize, to prevent server lockup
    * check arguments to jack_set_buffer_size() in server
    * jack_connect can use client UUIDs
    * sanitycheck now no longer warms about unlimited lockable memory
    * sanitycheck no longer mentions nice
    * fix race conditions near client exit/shutdown/zombiefication
    * no watchdog operations while freewheeling (JACK will no longer
die if freewheeling is very, very slow)
    * (incomplete) new internal client code based on a2jmidid
(originally by Dmitry Baikov & Nedko Arnaudov)