[Router] migrate from IronRouter to FlowRouter

[santisiri]

It has been recommended to us to use FlowRouter since it significantly boosts performance of Meteor-based apps.

[vjrj]

Maybe you should read this that (IMHO) affect a lot to kadira projects like flow-router:
https://forums.meteor.com/t/arunoda-leaving-the-meteor-community/31568

[brylie]

Yep. We recently migrated our project from IronRouter to FlowRouter. I am not sure whether it is the best use of effort right now, as the FlowRouter development seems to be stalled too. I.e. both routing projects show little recent activity:

• Iron Router: zero commits since 2015-11-30
• FlowRouter: zero commits since 2016-04-18

[vjrj]

I also take into account the stats. See last update, and installs (564k vs 18k):

➜  ~ fastosphere iron-router
564487⬇  2730★  iron:router                      1.0.13     6 months ago  Routing specifically designed for Meteor
0⬇       2036★  tmeasday:iron-router             0.9.4-rc2  2 years ago   Routing specifically designed for Meteor
40062⬇   228★   zimme:iron-router-active         2.0.1      a year ago    Deprecated! Use zimme:active-route
38511⬇   245★   multiply:iron-router-progress    1.0.2      a year ago    Progressbar for iron:router
2146⬇    173★   mrt:iron-router-progress         0.9.3      2 years ago   Progressbar for iron:router
23⬇      706★   orionjs:iron-router-progress     1.0.3      2 years ago   Progressbar for iron:router
15⬇      158★   sadmoondog:iron-router-progress  1.0.0      2 years ago   Progressbar for iron:router
1208⬇    25★    ostrio:iron-router-title         1.0.3      8 months ago  Change document.title (page title) on the fly within iron-router
1628⬇    59★    martino:iron-router-i18n         1.2.3      a year ago    Iron Router support for i18n
152⬇     10★    ostrio:iron-router-meta          1.1.0      8 months ago  Change meta tags, Scripts and CSS on the fly within iron-router
➜  ~ fastosphere flow-router
2⬇      1025★  staringatlights:flow-router  2.12.2  8 days ago    Carefully Designed Client Side Router for Meteor
18500⬇  1116★  meteorhacks:flow-router      1.19.0  a year ago    Use kadira:flow-router instead of this version
186⬇    1032★  meteorhacks:flow-router-ssr  2.0.1   a year ago    Carefully Designed Client Side Router for Meteor
0⬇      1025★  cultofcoders:flow-router     2.12.1  16 days ago   Carefully Designed Client Side Router for Meteor
12352⬇  194★   arillo:flow-router-helpers   0.5.2   6 months ago  Template helpers for flow-router
12⬇     194★   mdg:flow-router-extensions   0.2.8   a month ago   Update flow router to use a pattern that is more contained
66648⬇  190★   kadira:flow-router           0.0.0   47 years ago  [nodescription]
99⬇     19★    ostrio:flow-router-extra     2.12.6  10 days ago   Carefully extended flow-router with waitOn and template context
148⬇    13★    ostrio:flow-router-title     2.1.4   a month ago   Change document.title (page title) on the fly within flow-router
65⬇     13★    ostrio:flow-router-meta      1.1.3   a month ago   Change meta tags, links to styles (CSS) and scripts on the fly within flow-router

[santisiri]

This isn't a priority then. Any notions regarding the difference in performance?

That said: considering we might end up for the sake of decentralization prioritizing an installable client app (mobile & desktop), web routing performance might not be relevant in the long term.

[brylie]

It may be worth considering a 'unified' codebase for the web/native app. In practice, this means the router, and project JavaScript in general, would be running on the devices as an 'installable client'. This would mean fewer developers could maintain a single codebase, rather than the overhead and specialization needed to maintain separate clients for each target platform.

[santisiri]

fully agree on that @brylie. With meteor we can wrap the app to run as a native client using Cordova for mobile and Electron for desktop with the same codebase. The whole UX is designed for that purpose as well.