[Spread-users] MembershipInfo: is there a way to determine a leader, or oldest member of a group?

[Ryan Caudy]

Regular Membership Messages contain the list of the group members in a
deterministic order.  The order is not based on when the members
joined.

In 3.17.3, and that CVS branch, the order is alphabetic by private group name.

In the CVS head, the order is first by the daemon to which the members
are connected, and second by private group name of the member.  So, if
daemon A is listed in the configuration file before daemon B, you have
all the members from daemon A ordered by private name, followed by all
the members from daemon B ordered by private name.

A member knows if it's the first to join if the Regular Membership
Message that immediately follows it's join contains only that member. 
The group may have existed in the past and since become empty, but
there's no history to determine that.

A simple way to choose a new leader is to choose the member at the top
of the members list.  The common way to follow this strategy is to
change the leader to match this top member for each membership change.

Cheers,
Ryan

On 4/25/05, Laran Evans <laran.evans at gmail.com> wrote:
> Is there a way for me to determine whether or not I'm the first member
> of a SpreadGroup? I need a way to determine a leader essentially. The
> first process to join the group needs to do something at startup. From
> then on, if the leader dies, whomever is the first member of the group
> will become the leader and upon discovering this will do what the
> leader did at startup.
> 
> Many Thanks.
> 
> --
> -- Laran Evans
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Spread-users mailing list
> Spread-users at lists.spread.org
> http://lists.spread.org/mailman/listinfo/spread-users
>