Today we spent some time figuring out how to bind a UDP Socket to a specific interface, as opposed to any or 0.0.0.0. This special case is needed when a server holds multiple IP addresses. If you do not bind to a specific one, you will of course still receive incoming datagrams on any interface, but when you answer you could use a different server source address than the one the client sent to in the first place. That might lead to trouble, as it did for us.
We had to read through the (Linux) socket plugin code [1] to figure this out (and it might not work on other platforms). It turns out that Socket>>#primSocket: aHandle listenOn: portNumber backlogSize: backlog interface: ifAddr does not just work for TCP but also for UDP (we left backlog size to 1, it is not used).
In code (on a private helper class):
UDPListener>>#port: port bindingAddress: address
�� �� �� �� self socket: Socket newUDP.
�� �� �� �� self socket
�� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� primSocket: self socket socketHandle
�� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� listenOn: port
�� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� backlogSize: 1
�� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� interface: address
And yes, this is ugly.
Sven
[1] https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo-vm/blob/master/platforms/unix/plugins/SocketPlugin/sqUnixSocket.c