Installation

Inko's native code compiler is written in Rust and uses LLVM as its backend. The generated machine code links against a small runtime library, also written in Rust.

This guide covers the steps needed to get Inko installed on your platform of choice.

Supported platforms

Inko supports Linux, macOS, and FreeBSD (13.2 or newer). Inko might also work on other platforms, but we only provide support for the listed platforms. Windows isn't supported.

Requirements

• A 64-bits little-endian platform
• Rust 1.70 or newer
• LLVM 16
• A C compiler such as GCC or clang
• Git, for managing packages using the inko pkg command

Cross-platform

The easiest way to install Inko is to use Inko's own version manager: ivm. ivm supports all the platforms officially supported by Inko.

When installing Inko using ivm, you must first install the dependencies listed here.

Once ivm is installed, you can install Inko as follows:

ivm install latest

This installs the latest known version. If you want to install a specific version, run the following instead (where X.Y.Z is the version you want to install):

ivm install X.Y.Z

For more details on how to use ivm and switch versions, refer to the ivm guide.

Docker

If you are using Docker or Podman, you can use our official Docker/Podman images. These images are published on GitHub.com.

To install a specific version, run the following (replacing X.Y.Z with the version you want to install):

docker pull ghcr.io/inko-lang/inko:X.Y.Z # Using Docker
podman pull ghcr.io/inko-lang/inko:X.Y.Z # Using Podman

You can then run Inko as follows:

docker run inko-lang/inko:X.Y.Z inko --version # Using Docker
podman run inko-lang/inko:X.Y.Z inko --version # Using Podman

We also build a container for every commit on the main branch, provided the tests are passing. If you like to live dangerously, you can use these as follows:

# Using Docker:
docker pull ghcr.io/inko-lang/inko:main
docker run inko-lang/inko:main inko --version

# Using Podman:
podman pull ghcr.io/inko-lang/inko:main
podman run inko-lang/inko:main inko --version

Arch Linux

Inko is available in the AUR:

yay -S inko     # Latest stable release
yay -S inko-git # Latest Git commit

Fedora

Inko is available as a Copr repository:

sudo dnf install dnf-plugins-core
sudo dnf copr enable yorickpeterse/inko
sudo dnf install inko

FreeBSD

Inko is available as a port:

sudo pkg install inko

macOS

Inko is available in Homebrew:

brew install inko

You may need to add the LLVM bin directory to your PATH as follows:

export PATH="$(brew --prefix llvm@16)/bin:$PATH"

You may also need to set the LIBRARY_PATH to the following, though this doesn't appear to always be needed:

export LIBRARY_PATH="$(brew --prefix llvm@16)/lib:$(brew --prefix zstd)/lib"

From source

When building from Git, first clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/inko-lang/inko.git
cd inko

Or use a release tarball:

VER='0.15.0' # Replace this with the latest version of Inko

mkdir $VER
curl https://releases.inko-lang.org/$VER.tar.gz -o $VER.tar.gz
tar -C $VER -xf $VER.tar.gz
cd $VER

You can then compile Inko as follows:

In both cases the standard library in std/src is used. You can customise the standard library and runtime library paths by setting these environment variables when running cargo build:

• INKO_STD: the full path to the directory containing the standard library modules, defaults to ./std/src.
• INKO_RT: the full path to the directory containing the runtime libraries to link the generated code against, defaults to ./target/MODE where MODE is either debug for debug builds or release for release builds.

If you are building a package, it's recommended to use the provided Makefile instead, as this simplifies the process of moving the necessary files in place and using the right paths. To compile a release build of Inko, run make and make install to install the files. This process can be customised by setting the following Make variables:

• DESTDIR: the directory to install files into when running make install.
• PREFIX: the path prefix to use for all files, defaults to /usr. When combined with DESTDIR, the value of DESTDIR prefixes this value.

For example:

make PREFIX=/usr/local
make install DESTDIR=./package-root PREFIX=/usr/local

The PREFIX variable must be set for both the make and make install commands, but DESTDIR is only necessary for make install.

FreeBSD

When building from source, you may have to set the LIBRARY_PATH variable as follows:

LIBRARY_PATH="/usr/local/lib" cargo build

Without this the linker may fail to find the zstd and libffi libraries, which are needed by LLVM on FreeBSD.

Dependencies

When building from source or using ivm, you'll first need to install the compiler's dependencies.

Arch Linux

sudo pacman -Sy llvm16 rust git base-devel

If the llvm16 package is no longer available in the official repository, you'll need to install it from the AUR. Compiling LLVM from source can take a long time, so we recommend using Chaotic-AUR to speed up the build process.

Alpine

sudo apk add build-base rust cargo llvm16 llvm16-dev llvm16-static git

Debian

Debian 12:

sudo apt-get install --yes git build-essential llvm-16 llvm-16-dev \
    libstdc++-11-dev libclang-common-16-dev zlib1g-dev libzstd-dev

Debian 11:

curl https://apt.llvm.org/llvm-snapshot.gpg.key | \
    sudo tee /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/apt.llvm.org.asc
sudo add-apt-repository \
    "deb http://apt.llvm.org/bullseye/ llvm-toolchain-bullseye-16 main"
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install --yes git build-essential llvm-16 llvm-16-dev \
    libstdc++-10-dev libclang-common-16-dev zlib1g-dev libpolly-16-dev \
    libzstd-dev

The version of Rust provided by Debian is too old, so you'll need to use rustup to install the required Rust version.

Fedora

For Fedora 38 and newer:

sudo dnf install gcc make rust cargo llvm16 llvm16-devel llvm16-static \
    libstdc++-devel libstdc++-static libffi-devel zlib-devel git

Older versions of Fedora (e.g. Fedora 37) aren't supported.

FreeBSD

sudo pkg install llvm16 rust git

macOS

brew install llvm@16 rust git

Ubuntu

For Ubuntu 23.04 and newer:

sudo apt-get install --yes rustc cargo git build-essential llvm-16 llvm-16-dev \
    libstdc++-11-dev libclang-common-16-dev zlib1g-dev libzstd-dev

For older versions:

curl https://apt.llvm.org/llvm-snapshot.gpg.key | \
    sudo tee /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/apt.llvm.org.asc
sudo add-apt-repository \
    "deb http://apt.llvm.org/focal/ llvm-toolchain-focal-15 main"
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install --yes rustc cargo git build-essential llvm-16 llvm-16-dev \
    libstdc++-10-dev libclang-common-16-dev zlib1g-dev libpolly-16-dev \
    libzstd-dev