Install Amber V2 Beta

The supported onboarding path uses the standalone Amber CLI. The framework itself remains a shard dependency generated into each application.

Supported systems

Apple Silicon macOS
x86_64 Linux

Intel macOS, Linux ARM64, and Windows are not release-gated in this beta.

Prerequisites

Install Crystal 1.20 or newer, but earlier than 2.0, using the official Crystal instructions. You also need Git and shards.

crystal --version
shards --version
git --version

A database is not required for the generated core web app.

Homebrew

The tap and formula use an underscore. The installed executable is amber:

brew install amberframework/amber_cli/amber_cli
amber --version

The fully qualified command follows Homebrew's tap-trust model and trusts only the amber_cli formula. The installed executable remains amber.

Expect Amber CLI 2.0.2 or newer.

Direct archive

Choose darwin-arm64 on Apple Silicon macOS or linux-x86_64 on x86_64 Linux:

version=v2.0.2
platform=darwin-arm64
asset="amber_cli-${platform}.tar.gz"

curl -fLO "https://github.com/amberframework/amber_cli/releases/download/${version}/${asset}"
curl -fLO "https://github.com/amberframework/amber_cli/releases/download/${version}/${asset}.sha256"
shasum -a 256 -c "${asset}.sha256"
tar -xzf "${asset}"
install -m 0755 amber amber-lsp /usr/local/bin/
amber --version

On Linux, use sha256sum -c. Prefix only the install command with sudo if needed.

Verify the installation

amber new amber_beta_smoke --type web
cd amber_beta_smoke
crystal spec
crystal build src/amber_beta_smoke.cr -o bin/amber_beta_smoke
amber watch

In another terminal:

curl --fail http://127.0.0.1:3000/
curl --fail http://127.0.0.1:3000/css/app.css

Both requests must succeed. The generated shard.yml pins amberframework/amber at 2.0.0-beta.2; it must not reference a personal fork.

Manual framework dependency

For an existing Crystal app:

dependencies:
  amber:
    github: amberframework/amber
    version: 2.0.0-beta.2

crystal: ">= 1.20.0, < 2.0"

Do not use the moving v2-dev branch in a reproducible beta application.

Update or remove

brew update
brew upgrade amber_cli
# or
brew uninstall amber_cli
brew untap amberframework/amber_cli

Troubleshooting

If the wrong executable runs, inspect every match:

type -a amber
amber --version

Remove or rename an old Amber V1 executable, or put Homebrew earlier in PATH. On macOS, the beta binary must not require [email protected]; include otool -L "$(command -v amber)" in an issue.

If there is no archive for your architecture, the platform is not release-gated yet. A source build can help contributors evaluate it, but is not the supported installation promise.

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