[Icecast-dev] Coding in python using shout-python bindings

[Edgar Merino]

Hello,

I'm creating a module written in python that brings an easy to implement 
interface for the libshout lib, mainly to provide streaming capabilities 
to a gnome player called Exaile (http://www.exaile.org). The module is 
almost done (already available at 
http://devpower.blogsite.org:8080/archivos/icastplugin.py) but I'm 
encountering some problems (I believe sync problems):

I'll try to explain my self briefly,
The module defines a class called Icast, which needs at least an 
implementation of a Client to work. This Client can be anything, a GUI 
player (like exaile) or a cmdline app (mpg123), or anything that can be 
represented as a Client. This Client must define a method (called 
get_current_track()) to retrieve the current track being played by the 
client the class interfaces. The Icast class stores a copy of this too 
in an attribute called current_track

When the player changes the track, Icast noticies this by comparing the 
track information it has stored in current_track with the current song 
being played at the moment by the client (get_current_track()).

The streaming is done by the following block of code:
buf = f.read(4096)
if len(buf) == 0
  return
server.send(buf)
server.sync()

Ok that was the background, on to the problem:
After a random period of time, the listening client of the stream stops. 
At first I thought this was caused because the module had failed sending 
data to the server, but this was not the case as clicking "play" again 
in the listening client and checking the stats page of icecast had the 
stream available. So I tried to trace the bug in the code, and so far I 
believe it's a syncing problem; when the player performs its first track 
change everything is ok, but then data is sent to the server faster than 
the time it takes the track to play in the server player(the interface 
to the Client, NOT the listening client). The time it stays without 
sending data to the server increases with every song, I've noticed that 
when the listening client dies the server didn't receive data for almost 
4 - 5 seconds (but the server didn't ask for more, since server.sync() 
didn't take more time). If this is the correct behaviour of icecast then 
what should I do to tell the icecast server to wait N seconds before 
more data can be sent? (server.delay() what is this good for?). If this 
is not the correct behaviour or the behaviour can be controlled with 
icecast.xml how should I do it? (I tried setting burst-connect to 0 but 
got the same behaviour...)

I hope I can get some help with this, and excuse my big explanation of 
the problem and poor way to do it, but english is not my native language 
and it's been a while since I had a real conversation in this language. 
Thanks in advance.

Edgar Merino