Open Source Aura Framework

Throughout this developer guide, there are references to Aura components. For example, you’ll see the aura:component tag for a component in code samples. All along we’ve been talking about Lightning, so what is Aura, and what’s the difference? Lightning components are based on the open source Aura framework available at https://github.com/forcedotcom/aura. The Aura framework enables you to build apps completely independent of your data in Salesforce.

Note that the open source Aura framework has features and components that are not currently available in the Lightning Component framework. We are working to surface more of these features and components for Salesforce developers.