Computes the broadcast messages that are stable; i.e., have been received by all members. Sends STABLE events up the stack when this is the case. This allows NAKACK to garbage collect messages that have been seen by all members.
Works as follows: periodically we mcast our highest seqnos (seen for each member) to the group. A stability vector, which maintains the highest seqno for each member and initially contains no data, is updated when such a message is received. The entry for a member P is computed set to min(entry[P], digest[P]). When messages from all members have been received, a stability message is mcast, which causes all members to send a STABLE event up the stack (triggering garbage collection in the NAKACK layer).
New: when max_bytes
is exceeded (unless disabled by setting it to 0), a STABLE task will be started (unless it is already running). Design in docs/design/STABLE.txt
@author Bela Ban