Is this spec or bug?   

Hello,

this is not a bug as such, although the behaviour is not obvious. It can be fixed, when using version 1.0.2 or above, by turning on persistence in the brokers with bridges (make sure each broker has a different persistence directory).

When there is no persistence, each broker starts up with no subscriptions. A connection's subscriptions to the local broker are activated when the connection has completed its connection. So, when you send publish a message and the bridge has not yet connected, it hasn't yet subscribed to the local broker. When you turn on persistence, the connection's subscriptions are saved, and are active from the moment the broker starts up.

Your example has shown me that it would be better to move each connection's local subscribe action to the start of connecting, or even the start of the broker. Then this problem could be solved without the need for turning on persistence.

Ian

That would be the purpose of the change, yes, to make outgoing subscriptions for the bridge active right from the start of the broker rather than the start of the connection. I would like to make sure I've thought through all the consequences of making such a change before implementing it. For instance, it would create an asymmetry between "outgoing" and "incoming" subscriptions, which can only be made once the connection has been established. The persistence solution retains the symmetry.

The "double-click broker.exe" method of invocation on windows created persistence files when I just tried it. The only difference between the two methods of invocation should be the "current directory", where the broker looks for the default configuration file. If the current directory is different to the one you expect, the broker might pick up a different configuration file or none at all, and persistence may not be configured, or the persistence files may be put into a directory you did not expect.

Ian Craggs