amber-examples

amber-examples

This project contains various Amber Smalltalk examples. Amber may run in a web browser or as a command line program.

Tools needed

1. A web browser with reasonably good support for HTML5 canvas.
2. git, on Windows Git for Windows
3. nodejs. This will give you the node package manager npm as well.
4. A global install of the amber-cli npm package
5. A global install of the bower client side package manager in order to install the dependencies
6. A global install of the grunt-cli task runner which is used as the command line build system

The amber, bower and grunt-cli packages can be installed with the following command (In some cases you have to call npm with sudo npm):

npm install --global amber-cli bower grunt-cli

or as short form:

npm i -g amber-cli bower grunt-cli

Reference: http://docs.amber-lang.net/js-glossary.html

Setting up amber-examples

Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/amber-smalltalk/amber-examples.git

Get dependencies of this project:

cd amber-examples 
git submodule update --init --recursive
npm install
bower install

Amber in the browser

Amber runs in the browser and this includes an IDE. The amber subdirectory of bower_components is used.

To have access to this start a small web server:

amber serve

and point your browser to

http://localhost:4000/

Amber on the command line

Build or recompile a command line example (e.g. nodejs) by executing

grunt

in the subdirectory.

The subdirectories might contain additional README files which might contain additional information. Here the code in amber-dev subdirectory of node_modules and bower_components/amber is used.

Notes

• Since Amber version 0.10.0 grunt is used as commandline build system.
• For the global and local installation of the amber-cli and bower command line tools: The recommendation is to install them with the -g or --global option to be globally accessible. For some uses of these tools it is taken it for granted they are installed globally. So if you use a restricted environment where you cannot install the command line tools globally, try do it locally and some tools might still work. There will be feedback messages if there are problems with this. For a local installation use your home directory or a subdirectory ~/bin of it. Run the npm install commands without without the -g option, and you will find all the commands in the dir_used/node_modules/.bin subdirectory. Generally a local installation is not recommended.

Troubleshooting

SayHello example (Web) does not work : check in the web console which files cannot be loaded. Does the folder bower_components contain subfolders?

 Maybe the ``bower install`` command did not run fully? Or there was a problem with ``npm install``?
 Sometimes internet connection is slow and you have to re-run these commands.

Other examples

Version 0.12 and earlier

• ToDo List
• Ludus game framework
• Graphical libraries
• Benevoles (Manage rewards for volunteers)

Version 0.13

• https://github.com/philippeback/poly/tree/port0132

Status

• Loads fine with Amber version 0.12.6