Whim

Whim is an experimental programming language inspired by PHP and Hack. As a research project, it explores language ideas by putting them into practice, with the hope that useful ones can contribute to PHP’s future.

Warning

Do not use Whim in production. Every release may add, remove, or redesign any part of the language. Whim has no compatibility promise, release schedule, or production support.

Whim checks types and keeps generic type arguments at run time. It has value-based collections, pattern matching, classes, interfaces, enums, and cooperative tasks.

final readonly class Box<T> {
  public function __construct(public T $value) {}
}

function describe(mixed $value): string {
  return match ($value) {
    $box @ Box<int> => 'integer: ' . $box->value,
    $box @ Box<string> => 'text: ' . $box->value,
    $_ => 'other',
  };
}

write_line!(describe(new Box::<int>(42)));

What Whim includes

The whim executable runs source, formats code, prints bytecode, provides a language server, and manages Git dependencies. The standard library is written mainly in Whim. It covers async I/O, files, processes, networking, TLS, HTTP, WebSockets, SQLite, PostgreSQL, dates, encodings, and common data formats.

We also maintain Trifle packages on Codeberg.

Platform support

Release builds (✅ available, ❌ unavailable):

Architecture	macOS	Linux (glibc)	Linux (musl)	FreeBSD	Windows (MSVC)
x86_64	✅ *	✅	✅ *	✅ *	✅
x86	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌
AArch64	✅	✅ *	✅ *	✅ *	❌
ARM	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌
RISC-V	❌	✅ *	❌	❌	❌
LoongArch64	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌
PowerPC64	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌

* marks builds that are not tested in CI. RISC-V builds target 64-bit systems.

CI runs the Rust and Whim test suites on pushes to main and pull requests. FreeBSD and Linux musl builds run only in the release workflow, without running tests.

Install

Install the latest release on macOS, Linux, or FreeBSD:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://whim.sh/install.sh | bash

You can also download an archive from GitHub Releases. After installation, run:

whim --version

The container image is available at ghcr.io/carthage-software/whim.

On Windows, download the x86_64-pc-windows-msvc ZIP archive from GitHub Releases, extract whim.exe, and add its directory to your PATH.

On FreeBSD, install bash, curl, and postgresql18-client before using the installer. Release builds target FreeBSD 14.4 or later.

To build Whim from source, install Rust 1.99 or later and run:

cargo build --locked --release
./target/release/whim --version

Learn Whim

Try Whim in the Whim playground without installing it. The Whim book documents the language, command-line tools, package manager, and standard library. Start with Installation, then write Your First Program.

Development

Run the Rust and Whim test suites with:

cargo test --locked --workspace --all-features
cargo build --locked --release --bin whim
./target/release/whim tests/run.whim

The Justfile provides shorter development commands.

Reports

Whim accepts issue reports but not pull requests. Read CONTRIBUTING.md before opening an issue. Follow SECURITY.md to report a security problem.

License

Use Whim under either the Apache License, Version 2.0 or the MIT License.