Amber [![Gitter](https://badges.gitter.im/Join Chat.svg)](https://gitter.im/amber-smalltalk/amber?utm_source=badge&utm_medium=badge&utm_campaign=pr-badge&utm_content=badge) [![Travis CI Status](https://secure.travis-ci.org/amber-smalltalk/amber.png)](https://travis-ci.org/#!/amber-smalltalk/amber) [![devDependency status](https://david-dm.org/amber-smalltalk/amber/dev-status.svg?style=flat)](https://david-dm.org/amber-smalltalk/amber#info=devDependencies) [![Bountysource](https://www.bountysource.com/badge/team?team_id=19271&style=raised)](https://www.bountysource.com/teams/amber-smalltalk?utm_source=amber-smalltalk&utm_medium=shield&utm_campaign=raised) ===== By Nicolas Petton and [Amber contributors](https://github.com/amber-smalltalk/amber/contributors) Amber is an implementation of the Smalltalk language that runs on top of the JavaScript runtime. It is designed to make client-side development faster and easier. > \o/ **Call for contributors!** \o/ > > The core project of Amber has enough resources, but: > - the Helios IDE (https://github.com/amber-smalltalk/helios), as well as > - examples (https://github.com/amber-smalltalk/amber-examples), and > - documentation (https://github.com/amber-smalltalk/amber-documentation) > > would need some of your care. > > Thank you very much! > > (see [CONTRIBUTING.md](CONTRIBUTING.md) for further details) Overview -------- Amber is written in itself, including the parser and compiler. Amber compiles into efficient JavaScript, mapping one-to-one with the equivalent JavaScript. There is no interpretation at runtime. Some highlights: - Amber features an IDE with a Class browser, Workspace, Transcript, a ReferencesBrowser supporting senders/implementors and class references, basic Inspector and even a beginning of a Debugger and a unit TestRunner. - [Pharo Smalltalk](http://www.pharo-project.org) is considered as the reference implementation. - Amber includes a canvas to generate HTML, like [Seaside](http://www.seaside.st) - Amber can use Javascript libraries and the current IDE is built on [jQuery](http://www.jquery.com) - You can inline Javascript code and there are many ways to interact between Amber and Javascript Prerequisites ------------- Amber is shipped as a cli tool to create new projects and assist with development tasks in a [npm](http://npmjs.org) package `amber-cli` and as a library to be used by projects in a [bower](https://github.com/bower/bower) package `amber`. For the installation to work, you need to have installed `node`, `npm` and `git` (in Windows, use Git for Windows and select "Run Git from Windows Command Prompt" and "Checkout Windows-style, commit Unix-style" installation options). For UNIX-based OS (Linux distibutions, FreeBSD, ...) do npm config set prefix=~/npm export PATH="$PATH:$HOME/npm/bin" to have the installation in a local subdirectory in order to avoid the otherwise necessary ``sudo`` installation of Amber. The export line needs to be added to the ~/.profile file as well so that after a new login the path is set. Getting Amber and setting up an initial project ----------------------------------------------- Do this to install Amber # Install the CLI tool `amber-cli` and supporting tools npm install -g amber-cli bower grunt-cli Use ``amber init`` to create a project of your own # Initialize your project (directory must be empty) cd /path/to/myproject amber init # (optional) Install backward compatibility bower install amber-compat-es5 --save # be loadable in older browsers bower install amber-compat-ie8 --save # additional tweaks to load in IE8 Start developing in Amber Smalltalk # Serve amber on localhost:4000 amber serve Reporting issues -------------- - Report issues with the www.amber-lang.net website here: https://github.com/amber-smalltalk/amber-website/issues. - Report issues with the docs.amber-lang.net website here: https://github.com/amber-smalltalk/documentation/issues. - Report issues with Amber itself or `amber` / `amberc` cli tools here: https://github.com/amber-smalltalk/amber/issues. Issues related to questions during `amber init` and structure of project created should be reported to https://github.com/amber-smalltalk/grunt-init-amber/issues instead. - Report issues with the Helios IDE here: https://github.com/amber-smalltalk/helios/issues. Please refer to [CONTRIBUTING.md](CONTRIBUTING.md) for further details. Developing Amber -------------- Please refer to [CONTRIBUTING.md](CONTRIBUTING.md) for further details. It explains the Amber development setup and how to contribute. License ------- Amber is released under the MIT license. All contributions made for inclusion are considered to be under MIT. More infos ---------- More on the [project page](http://amber-lang.net)