Channels are now created with a valid pointer to a buffer before the
buffer is allocated. This buffer is a global one called "buf_empty" and
of size zero. Thus it prevents any activity from being performed on
the buffer and still ensures that chn->buf may always be dereferenced.
b_free() also resets the buffer to &buf_empty, and was split into
b_drop() which does not reset the buffer.
We don't call pool_free2(pool2_buffers) anymore, we only call b_free()
to do the job. This ensures that we can start to centralize the releasing
of buffers.
b_alloc() now allocates a buffer and initializes it to the size specified
in the pool minus the size of the struct buffer itself. This ensures that
callers do not need to care about buffer details anymore. Also this never
applies memory poisonning, which is slow and useless on buffers.
We'll soon need to be able to switch buffers without touching the
channel, so let's move buffer initialization out of channel_init().
We had the same in compressoin.c.
With this commit, we now separate the channel from the buffer. This will
allow us to replace buffers on the fly without touching the channel. Since
nobody is supposed to keep a reference to a buffer anymore, doing so is not
a problem and will also permit some copy-less data manipulation.
Interestingly, these changes have shown a 2% performance increase on some
workloads, probably due to a better cache placement of data.
Alex Markham reported and diagnosed a bug appearing on 1.5-dev11,
causing a crash on x86_64 when header hashing is used. The cause is
a missing (int) cast causing a negative offset to appear positive
and the resulting pointer to go out of bounds.
The crash is not possible anymore since 1.5-dev12 because a second
bug caused the negative sign to disappear so the pointer is always
within range but always wrong, so balance hdr() never works anymore.
This fix restores the correct behaviour and ensures the sign is
correct.
These functions do not depend on the channel flags anymore thus they're
much better suited to be used on plain buffers. Move them from channel
to buffer.
