Amber 0.12.0 released!

After 3 months of work we are pleased to announce the 0.12.0 release of Amber.

Besides the usual bug fixes a lot of new features have emerged.

The biggest change is the switch to RequireJS to specify Amber package
dependencies and to load the packages as AMD modules.  Amber is now
additionally available as Bower [2] component.  Bower is also used to
manage required JavaScript libraries which don't have to be kept around
in the repository anymore.

The repository layout was restructured to provide a cleaner separation
of different Amber parts:

* Smalltalk code is located in 'st'
* Compiled Amber packages are located in 'js'
* Supporting JavaScript code is located in 'support'

Together with the RequireJS changes the specifying their dependencies
the Brickz [3] reconfigurable micro composition system was introduced.

On the Smalltalk side support has been added for writing exponential
numbers of the form 2e5.

Helios (the new IDE) is progressing nicely and has seen a lot of
improvements.  One of the great parts is the new stepping debugger which
is also making progress.  To try Helios, open the helios.html page or
evaluate in any other amber page
`require('amber/helpers').popupHelios()`.

The last enhancements target the commandline compiler which can be used
as `amberc` (an executable script) or as a Grunt task.  The following
features have been added:

 * generation of shebang line (#!/usr/bin/env node)
 * specification of target namespace (`-n` flag; `amd_namespace` option in Grunt)
 * specification of additional library directories (`-L` flag; `library_dirs` option in Grunt)
The following features have been removed:
 * creation of *.deploy.js files (`-d` flag; `deploy` option in Grunt)
 * optimization passes via Closure compiler (`-o`/`-O` flags; `closure_jar` option in Grunt)
   The same behavior can be achieved by using specific Grunt tasks

Additionally, the Grunt task now handles the -v/--verbose flag which
triggers the same behavior as the `verbose` option which can be
specified in the Gruntfile.


Some numbers about this release (starting from 0.11.0):

* 660 commits
* 10 committers
* 66 unit tests added
* 152 issues were closed
* 379 unit tests in total


Commits: https://github.com/amber-smalltalk/amber/compare/0.11.0...0.12.0
Issues: https://github.com/amber-smalltalk/amber/issues?direction=desc&milestone=8&page=1&sort=updated&state=closed

For the most important API related changes see the file API-CHANGES.txt.


* Installing Amber from NPM

To install Amber from NPM, run

    npm install amber

* Installing Amber from Bower

To install Amber from Bower, run

    bower install amber

* Migration from Amber 0.11.0

First, the loading of JavaScript files must be adapted. The custom
loader has been replaced with requirejs for loading files in the
browser. New loader code is thouroughly explained in [4].

After updating the loader part, `.st` files need to be recompiled into
new AMD `.js` files. During loader changes, a namespace was choosen and
will be needed for recompilation.

Go to your directory with `.st` files and issue this from the shell:

```sh
<path-to-amber>/bin/amberc -l SUnit,Canvas -n <chosen-namespace> -D <path-for-compiled-js-files> *.st
```

In windows, use `\` as path separator, the rest is identical.

The `-l SUnit,Canvas` is just a general guess, if your code depends on
more (or less) non-kernel packages from amber, list them here
accordingly.

This migrate scenario only covers simple deployments with your project's
code and amber.  If your project is more complicated, using libraries
and packages from multiple sources, it is hard to give general advices
to migrate - you must do it library by library, giving each location its
own namespace, and `-L` option of `amberc` comes handy when integrating;
ask on the mailing list if problems arise.

[1] http://requirejs.org/
[2] http://bower.io/
[3] https://github.com/amber-smalltalk/brikz
[4] https://github.com/amber-smalltalk/amber/wiki/How-to-load-amber


Happy Amber hacking!
The Amber crew

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