BroadcastChan: Closable, fair, single-wakeup, broadcast channels ================================================================ [![BSD3](https://img.shields.io/badge/License-BSD-blue.svg)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_License) [![Hackage](https://img.shields.io/hackage/v/broadcast-chan.svg)](https://hackage.haskell.org/package/broadcast-chan) [![Stackage](https://www.stackage.org/package/broadcast-chan/badge/lts?label=Stackage)](https://www.stackage.org/package/broadcast-chan) [![Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/merijn/broadcast-chan.svg)](https://travis-ci.org/merijn/broadcast-chan) A closable, fair, single-wakeup channel that avoids the 0 reader space leak that `Control.Concurrent.Chan` from base suffers from. The `Chan` type from `Control.Concurrent.Chan` consists of both a read and write end combined into a single value. This means there is always at least 1 read end for a `Chan`, which keeps any values written to it alive. This is a problem for applications/libraries that want to have a channel that can have zero listeners. Suppose we have an library that produces events and we want to let users register to receive events. If we use a channel and write all events to it, we would like to drop and garbage collect any events that take place when there are 0 listeners. The always present read end of `Chan` from base makes this impossible. We end up with a `Chan` that forever accumulates more and more events that will never get removed, resulting in a memory leak. `BroadcastChan` splits channels into separate read and write ends. Any message written to a a channel with no existing read end is immediately dropped so it can be garbage collected. Once a read end is created, all messages written to the channel will be accessible to that read end. Once all read ends for a channel have disappeared and been garbage collected, the channel will return to dropping messages as soon as they are written. Why should I use `BroadcastChan` over `Control.Concurrent.Chan`? --- * `BroadcastChan` is closable, * `BroadcastChan` has no 0 reader space leak, * `BroadcastChan` has comparable or better performance. Why should I use `BroadcastChan` over various (closable) STM channels? --- * `BroadcastChan` is single-wakeup, * `BroadcastChan` is fair, * `BroadcastChan` performs better under contention.