amber-documentation/overview/1-installing-amber.md

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title: Installing Amber layout: default permalink: "installing.html" parent: Overview

next: "/overview/loading-amber.html"

1. The npm package

The npm package contains two command-line tools: amber, and amberc (the command-line compiler).

The amber tool includes a server to run on localhost and makes it easier to save packages to be committed on disk. It is a very convenient way to get started.

npm is a package manager for nodejs, a JavaScript runtime used to run JavaScript code outside of the web browser.

nodejs and npm can either be downloadeded from the website, or installed using Operating System specific package managers.

Installing nodejs on MacOS X and Windows

The easiest way to install nodejs on MacOS X and Windows is to download the installer from the downloaded page.

For MacOS X users, nodejs can also be installed with homebrew:

{% highlight sh %} brew install nodejs {% endhighlight %}

When installed via homebrew, npm may have problems updating, running npm -gf update instead of traditional npm -g update solves the issue.

Installing nodejs on Ubuntu

Ubuntu provides nodejs as well as npm in its repository.

{% highlight sh %} sudo apt-get install nodejs npm {% endhighlight %}

Installing nodejs on other operating system

See node.js instructions for installing node and npm using respective package managers.

Installing the node amber package

Once nodejs and npm are installed, evaluate:

{% highlight sh %} npm install -g amber {% endhighlight %}

Ubuntu users will have to evaluate it with sudo:

{% highlight sh %} sudo npm install -g amber {% endhighlight %}

2. The bower component

The npm package doesn't provide the JavaScript files required to load Amber in a page. This is instead provided by the bower package.

Bower is a package manager for the web. It makes it easy to manage dependencies in your application including Amber. Unlike npm, Bower components are meant to be used inside the web browser.

If not already present, Bower is installed using npm: npm install -g bower, on some OSes (Linux, FreeBSD) sudo npm install -g bower.

In the root directory of the project, Amber bower component can be installed either by

bower install amber --save

or by adding a bower.json file like the following:

{% highlight json %} {

"name": "example-project",
"dependencies": {
    "amber": "~0.12.3"
}

} {% endhighlight %}

and evaluating

bower install

In both cases, Amber will be installed in a directory named bower_components.

We will see in the next section how to setup a project using bower.