amber-documentation/getting-started/1-installing-amber.md

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

next: "/getting-started/setting-up-project.html"

Amber is shipped both as

• a npm module for its command-line interface tool amber with a small server, compiler and REPL;
• a bower component used as dependency for other projects.

The command-line tool

Using the command-line tool amber is not required, as any webdav server can serve amber files and allow packages to be committed, but it is a very convenient way to get started. Also, the npm package comes with a command-line compiler and a REPL.

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 downloaded 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:

brew install nodejs

Installing nodejs on Ubuntu

Ubuntu provides nodejs as well as npm in its repository.

sudo apt-get install nodejs npm

Installing amber

Once nodejs and npm are installed, evaluate:

npm install -g amber

Ubuntu users will have to evaluate it with sudo:

sudo npm install -g amber

The bower component

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.

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