

Harp – Open-source web server with built-in pre-processing - Osmose
http://harpjs.com/

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necubi
This is a pretty similar idea to my project Slinky [0], and it's definitely a
productive way to do single page development. Slinky adds source dependency
management (a.js depends on b.coffee), a built in proxy,
concatenation/minification for final deployment and some other treats.

[0] [http://mwylde.github.io/slinky/](http://mwylde.github.io/slinky/)

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_pius
Great idea. If they're not already doing it, they should make sure they
implement the URL rewriting needed to support HTML5 pushState routing.

(c.f. [http://readystate4.com/2012/05/17/nginx-and-apache-
rewrite-t...](http://readystate4.com/2012/05/17/nginx-and-apache-rewrite-to-
support-html5-pushstate/))

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zallarak
Relevant: also check out Backlift
([https://www.backlift.com/](https://www.backlift.com/)) -- it includes stuff
like pre-processing and includes Dropbox integration + a backend + more.. A
potential game changer in terms of dev time.

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silentrob
Today we launched our open source tool, but we also have a hosted platform
that is build on Dropbox. See harp.io for that.

We have hung out with the Backlift guys - they are awesome.

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mkoryak
I would rather have a boiler plate express project that provides the same
thing as this without any of the framework lock in.

Cool thing none the less if you already develop with that exact tech stack.

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silentrob
Done -
[http://harpjs.com/docs/environment/lib](http://harpjs.com/docs/environment/lib)

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freshhawk
Not a solution to a problem I have* but I like the choice to carve out a new
niche and experiment with a different mix of features made prominent in the
web/app server.

* Unless my assumptions about the control over the caching of various template fragments and rendering work is wrong, which is totally possible.

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colevscode
What are those assumptions? What problem do you have related to caching
template fragments and rendering?

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jonny_eh
Nice pivot guys, congrats on finally launching!

Weren't you originally supposed to be similar to site44? i.e. Static site
hosting using dropbox.

Why the change?

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silentrob
We haven't changed. We are just launching our open source server / APF first,
building a little more community around that and then we will launch Harp.io.

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eli
I'm curious: did you release the server first because the harp.io bits aren't
quite ready yet? Or is building a community for the backend server intended to
eventually drive customers to the hosted service?

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silentrob
Honestly, both. We are big believers in open source and creating more value
then we can capture. This was true when we created PhoneGap, and still true
today.

The Platform is not far off and we have people using it, we just want to apply
a little more polish and make the experience exceptional.

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asa400
So unless I'm missing something, this is more/less Jekyll with generalized
capability and less blog-focus? Looks interesting.

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casca
Nice idea as a faster incremental development tool, but not something that one
should run in production.

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tlrobinson
Why not? Stick an HTTP cache (Varnish, Cloudflare, whatever) in front of it,
and I see no reason not to do the preprocessing on the fly.

Also: "Harp apps run directly with the built-in web server, _or exported to
HTML, CSS & JS, putting you in full control of your production environment_."

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dsl
Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

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mburns
>"A witty saying proves nothing."

Node + Varnish + (optionally) CDN is a very production-ready stack for serving
static content.

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Cyranix
Maybe I'm missing something from a design/marketing perspective, but... am I
mistaken in thinking that the ice cream imagery totally unrelated to
everything else?

On the whole, though, I love the idea. Hope I get a chance to try it out.

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antoinec
I'm using hem, with a heroku hosting, which is doing the same kind of job
basically, does harp provide any kind of value added ?

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tracker1
It would be cool if they added a package.json file with the necessary
dependencies and a start script defined.

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tlrobinson
It would be cool to support CommonJS modules in the browser using Browserify
or similar as well.

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nerdburn
Yea, CommonJS would be rad.

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te_chris
So how does this compare to yeoman?

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colevscode
Awesome work! I love the deploy to github pages feature!

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hcatlin
No Sass support? :(

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silentrob
We started with LESS and Stylus, but Sass is in the works.

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huu
organized*, not orginized

