limine/README.md

Limine

What is Limine?

Limine (pronounced as demonstrated here) is a modern, advanced, portable, multiprotocol bootloader and boot manager, also used as the reference implementation for the Limine boot protocol.

Donate

If you want to support the work I (@mintsuki) do on Limine, feel free to donate to me on Liberapay:

Donations welcome, but absolutely not mandatory!

Limine's boot menu

Photo by Mo Eid

Supported architectures

• IA-32 (32-bit x86)
• x86-64
• aarch64 (arm64)
• riscv64

Supported boot protocols

• Linux
• Limine
• Multiboot 1
• Multiboot 2
• Chainloading

Supported partitioning schemes

• MBR
• GPT
• Unpartitioned media

Supported filesystems

• FAT12/16/32
• ISO9660 (CDs/DVDs)

If your filesystem isn't listed here, please read the philosophy first, especially before opening issues or pull requests related to this.

Minimum system requirements

For 32-bit x86 systems, support is only ensured starting with those with Pentium Pro (i686) class CPUs.

All x86-64, aarch64, and riscv64 (UEFI) systems are supported.

Packaging status

All Limine releases since 7.x use Semantic Versioning for their naming.

Binary releases

For convenience, for point releases, binaries are distributed. These binaries are shipped in the -binary branches and tags of this repository (see branches and tags).

For example, to clone the latest binary release of the 7.x branch, one can do:

git clone https://github.com/limine-bootloader/limine.git --branch=v7.x-binary --depth=1

or, to clone a specific binary point release (for example 7.9.2):

git clone https://github.com/limine-bootloader/limine.git --branch=v7.9.2-binary --depth=1

In order to rebuild host utilities like limine, simply run make in the binary release directory.

Host utility binaries are provided for Windows.

Building the bootloader

The following steps are not necessary if cloning a binary release. If so, skip to "Installing Limine binaries".

Building with Nix

This repository provides Nix-based tooling for a convenient development environment and building Limine using Nix.

To use the regular build flow using a toolchain obtained by Nix, simply run $ nix develop to open a Nix shell. Then follow the guide below, skipping the "Prerequisites" step.

Regular build

Prerequisites

In order to build Limine, the following programs have to be installed: common UNIX tools (also known as coreutils), GNU make, grep, sed, find, awk, gzip, nasm, mtools (optional, necessary to build limine-uefi-cd.bin). Furthermore, gcc or llvm/clang must also be installed, alongside the respective binutils.

Configure

If using a release tarball (recommended, see https://github.com/limine-bootloader/limine/releases), run ./configure directly.

If checking out from the repository, run ./bootstrap first in order to download the necessary dependencies and generate the configure script (GNU autoconf required).

./configure takes arguments and environment variables; for more information on these, run ./configure --help.

./configure by default does not build any Limine port. Make sure to read the output of ./configure --help and enable any or all ports!

Limine supports both in-tree and out-of-tree builds. Simply run the configure script from the directory you wish to execute the build in. The following make commands are supposed to be run inside the build directory.

Building Limine

To build Limine, run:

make    # (or gmake where applicable)

The generated bootloader files are going to be in ./bin.

Installing Limine binaries

This step is optional as the bootloader binaries can be used from the ./bin or release directory just fine. This step will only install them to share, include, and bin directories in the specified prefix (default is /usr/local, see ./configure --help, or the PREFIX variable if installing from a binary release).

To install Limine, run:

make install    # (or gmake where applicable)

Usage

See USAGE.md.

Acknowledgments

Limine uses a stripped-down version of tinf for early GZIP decompression.

Limine relies on stb_image for runtime GZIP decompression and image loading.

Limine uses a patched version of libfdt (can be found in Linux's source tree) for manipulating FDTs.

Discord server

We have a Discord server if you need support, info, or you just want to hang out with us.