Is locomotive active ? And what about cluster?

[lundin]

Hi Jared,

Are you still working with locomotive ? I find it very good and easy to get up and running so a big thanks to you. But with Express 3.0 and future versions coming i am wondering what will happen with locomotive ?

I like the simple design of your MVC-architecture, mabey the geedy models can be handy sometimes, but having a good js framework on the client (like extjs) can overcome this instead.

Also, i am missing an app.js file to bind the models, views and controller and define globals like:

locomotive.application({
name: 'myApp',

appFolder: 'app',

controllers: [
'Users'
],
models:[
'Users''
],
launch: function() {
..
}

In here i would like to use some native nodejs function like cluster etc.How do use use cluster/workers with locomotive ?

After all, doing some work just to learn is fine, but do i dare to use locomotive on a real web app ?

[jaredhanson]

Of course, Locomotive is definitely still active!

Once Express 3 lands, Locomotive will be updated to be fully compatible with it. I've been testing Express 3.x for a few months now, and the changes will be minimal.

Regarding customizing the app, check out this discussion on the Google Group:
https://groups.google.com/d/topic/locomotivejs/WnKmRpr-i1k/discussion

Cluster support will be built in to Locomotive soon, so you can launch an app with lcm cluster. It seems like the cluster API in node is a bit in flux between 0.6.x and 0.8.x, so I'm letting that settle a bit before investing in building it into Locomotive. But the layering discussed in the above discussion should allow you to do it separately, if you want.

Above everything else, I intend to keep Locomotive as minimal as possible. Just enough to boot an Express instance with some MVC sugar, covering the 80% cases well, and then let the app layer on anything else it needs.

The currently filed issues are a good representation of my to-do list for Locomotive. And I'm attempting to tick one "big" item off every 2-3 weeks (usually in service to my own needs, at the moment).

Feel free to send feedback or requests, and I'll gladly accept patches!

[lundin]

Jared,

Thanks for your reply, good to know and it all make sense.

And for the app logic, doing it in myserver.js rather than using the lcm command i very much like it (that would also separate it from other MVC framworks having the same server start "feature") and encourage you to follow that path. It just makes it all transparent and clean.

Using express, locomotive and passport, it is amazing how rapid app prototypes can be made to check out your ideas!

[jaredhanson]

Cluster support will be available in Locomotive 0.4.0, scheduled for release this week. See this comment for further details.