Install inko with Homebrew, apk, Nix

Project links

• Homepage
• Repository
• Upstream docs
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• inko

Project history

The public source repository was created in April 2015 and is maintained under the inko-lang organization. The repository and official site describe Inko as a language for building concurrent software with confidence, with a runtime and compiler implementation written largely in Rust and released under the MPL-2.0 license.

Inko's design evolved around actor-like lightweight processes inspired by Erlang and Pony, single ownership and move semantics, and compile-time checks that prevent data races when values are sent between processes. That combination places it in the same package-manager neighborhood as experimental systems languages and language runtimes rather than ordinary application CLIs.

Adoption history

Inko has niche adoption typical of a young language runtime: source packages, manual documentation, editor support, a package manager surface, and distribution through package managers such as Homebrew, Nix, and Alpine. The inko-lang organization also maintains related tooling, including a version manager, editor support, a Tree-sitter grammar, and the project website.

How it is used

Users install the `inko` executable to compile and run Inko programs. Official examples emphasize small command-line programs, concurrency with async types and messages, pattern matching, error handling through Result-like values, unit tests, file I/O, and HTTP server/client use from the standard library.

Why package nerds care

For package maintainers, Inko is interesting because it is both a language implementation and a moving toolchain: packaging it means tracking compiler/runtime changes, LLVM integration, Rust-built components, manual documentation, and adjacent editor/package ecosystem pieces.

Timeline

• 2015: Public Inko repository created on GitHub.
• 2023: NLnet listed Inko as an NGI0 Entrust project focused on deterministic automatic memory management, native code compilation, C FFI, cross-compilation, and standard-library expansion.
• 2026: Homebrew metadata lists Inko as a packaged programming language compiler CLI.

Related projects

• Related projects include Erlang and Pony as concurrency influences, LLVM as the native code backend, Rust as the implementation language, and inko-lang companion repositories such as ivm, tree-sitter-inko, inko.vim, and vscode support.

Sources

• https://api.github.com/repos/inko-lang/inko
• https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/inko
• https://github.com/inko-lang/inko
• https://inko-lang.org/
• https://nlnet.nl/project/Inko/