Amber [](https://gitter.im/amber-smalltalk/amber?utm_source=badge&utm_medium=badge&utm_campaign=pr-badge&utm_content=badge) [](https://travis-ci.org/#!/amber-smalltalk/amber) [](https://david-dm.org/amber-smalltalk/amber#info=devDependencies)
=====
By Nicolas Petton <petton.nicolas@gmail.com> 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
Getting Amber
-------------
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`.
Do this [1] to create an Amber project of your own and start working in it:
# Install the CLI tool `amber-cli`
npm install -g amber-cli
# Initialize your project (directory must be empty)
cd /path/to/myproject
amber init
# Serve amber on localhost:4000
amber serve
The [Getting started](https://github.com/amber-smalltalk/amber/wiki/Getting-started) page shows more details on ways to obtain Amber and start a project.
[1] For installation to work, you need to install `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).
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)