== Sugar == The secret sauce to make JavaScript a lot sweeter !

Sugar is a new programming language designed to replace JavaScript for client-side (and server-side) web development. Sugar is inspired by languages such as Python, Smalltalk, Pascal, Eiffel and Lisp. Sugar can compile to JavaScript, ActionScript and Python.

For the impatient, here is an example of Sugar's syntax:

@module helloworld

@class HelloWorld | This is a docstring for my hello world

  @property message

  @constructor
      message = "Hello, World !"
  @end

  @method say
      alert ( message )
  @end

@end

Design goals

Sugar was designed with software engineering in mind, which means the core values are readability, maintainability and expressivity. While Sugar does no forces you to use objects everywhere, it encourages you to use classes (yes, sugar also has class-based inheritance) and focus on your program architecture.

Sugar design goals include:

• Can be learned in a couple of days by average developers
• Abstract from common JavaScript pitfalls
• Minimize the differences in the code produced by different coders
• Capture more information than other languages (be explicit)

Sugar owes the following languages in different areas:

• Python, for the simplicity and cleanliness of the syntax
• Eiffel, for the design by contract support
• Smalltalk, for blocks
• Io, for the message sending syntax
• ML, for the pattern-matching syntax
• Lisp, for the map/reduce/filter support

Installing sugar

Sugar is implemented in Python (2.4+) and uses the DParser, and relies on the LambdaFactory library.

If you don't already have dparser, you should do the following:

cd Dependencies ; bash make-dparser.sh

and then copy the 'Dependencies/dparser' directory to somewhere in your 'PYTHONPATH' or do

export PYTHONPATH=pwd/Dependencies/dparser:${PYTHONPATH}

We're slowly getting away from DParser, as it has problems with 64 bits, and is not flexible enough for the future of Sugar. In the meantime, please bear with it ;)

Once you have DParser and LambdaFactory installed, simply type:

python setup.py install

And you'll have sugar install, and will have the 'sugar' command available in your path.

Alternatively, if you'd like to hack on Sugar, you could do:

export PYTHONPATH=pwd/Sources alias sugar=pwd/Sources/sugar/main

(and you could later include these in your '~/.bash_profile', making sure to replace 'pwd' by the actual Sugar directory).

Using sugar

Compile a Sugar file to JavaScript

sugar -c hello.sjs

Compile a Sugar file to Python

sugar -clpy hello.sjs

Compile a Sugar file to ActionScript

sugar -clas hello.sjs

Compile a Sugar file to a directory

sugar -cl -o. hello.sjs

Add a library (LIBRARY) path to search for Sugar modules

sugar -cl -LLIBRARY hello.sjs

Troubleshooting

I get the following error:

fail: unable to open /usr/local/bin/d_parser_mach_gen.g for write

This is because Dparser is trying to write a tempoary file along with the executable. Move the 'sugar' command to a directory where you have write permission (like '~/bin'). We know it's annoying, and we're working on a new version without dparser.

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