---
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](http://nodejs.org), a
JavaScript runtime used to run JavaScript code outside of the web
browser.

`nodejs` and `npm` can either be
[downloadeded](http://nodejs.org/download) 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](http://nodejs.org/download) page.

For MacOS X users, nodejs can also be installed with [homebrew](http://brew.sh/):

{% 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](https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/issues/22408#issuecomment-30338806).

#### Installing nodejs on Ubuntu

Ubuntu provides nodejs as well as npm in its repository. A ppa provides a more up-to-date version though:

{% highlight sh %}
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:chris-lea/node.js
sudo apt-get update
{% endhighlight %}


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

#### Installing nodejs on other operating system

See node.js [instructions for installing](https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/Installing-Node.js-via-package-manager)
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-cli
{% endhighlight %}

Ubuntu users will have to evaluate it with `sudo`:

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


### 2. The bower component

<p class="note">
The following section explains how to manually setup Amber using Bower. The <code>amber init</code> command provided by the npm package automates it. Unless you want to (a) understand how it works or (b) setup Amber differently, you can refer to the <a href="/getting-started.html">getting started</a> page.
</p>


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](http://bower.io) 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

```sh
bower install amber --save
```

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

{% highlight json %}
{
    "name": "example-project",
    "dependencies": {
        "amber": "~0.12.4"
    }
}
{% endhighlight %}

and evaluating
```sh
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.