Releases

Lifecycle

Since Lima v1.x, each major release receives security updates and critical bug fixes until three months after the next major release.

Since Lima v2.3, each major and minor release contains a Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) together with the other release artifacts.

The following features are deprecated:

limactl show-ssh command: deprecated in v0.18.0 (Use ssh -F ~/.lima/default/ssh.config lima-default instead)
Ansible provisioning mode: deprecated in Lima v1.1.0 (Use ansible-playbook playbook.yaml after the start instead)
limactl --yes flag: deprecated in Lima v2.0.0 (Use limactl (clone|rename|edit|shell) --start instead)
Environment variable LIMA_SSH_OVER_VSOCK: deprecated in Lima v2.0.2 (Use the YAML property .ssh.overVsock)
YAML property cpuType: deprecated in Lima v2.0.0 (Use vmOpts.qemu.cpuType instead)
YAML property rosetta: deprecated in Lima v2.0.0 (Use vmOpts.vz.rosetta instead)
limactl start-at-login command: deprecated in Lima v2.2.0 (Use limactl autostart instead, which also adds support for starting instances at system boot via --condition=boot)

YAML property network: deprecated in Lima v0.7.0 and removed in Lima v0.14.0, in favor of networks
YAML property useHostResolver: deprecated in Lima v0.8.1 and removed in Lima v0.14.0,in favor of hostResolver.enabled
VDE support, including VNL and vde_vmnet: deprecated in Lima v0.12.0 and removed in Lima v0.22.0, in favor of socket_vmnet
CentOS 7 guest support: deprecated in Lima v0.9.2 and removed in Lima v0.23.0, in favor of CentOS Stream, AlmaLinux, and Rocky Linux.

Loading non-strict YAMLs (i.e., YAMLs with unknown properties): once deprecated in Lima v0.12.0, but undeprecated in Lima v1.0.4

The following features are experimental and subject to change:

mountType: virtiofs on Linux
vmType: wsl2 and relevant configurations (mountType: wsl2)
arch: riscv64, armv7l, s390x, and ppc64le
video.display: vnc and relevant configuration (video.vnc.display)
audio.device, audio.interface, and audio.microphone
mountInotify: true
tpm: true
user.passwordlessSudo (See Sudo)
External drivers: building and using drivers as separate executables (see Virtual Machine Drivers)
vmType: krunkit
vmType:hcs
github URL scheme: referencing templates on GitHub with github: URLs
macOS guests
FreeBSD guests
Windows guests

The following commands are experimental and subject to change:

The following features were experimental in the past:

mountType: 9p
vmType: vz and relevant configurations (mountType: virtiofs, rosetta, []networks.vzNAT)
mode: user-v2 in networks.yml and relevant configuration in lima.yaml

The default socket_vmnet group in networks.yaml was changed from everyone to admin. A non-admin user must set group to a group they belong to (e.g. staff).
The default VM driver on Windows hosts was changed from wsl2 to qemu, as wsl2 is not compatible with most templates.
External driver transport was reworked:
- The Driver.FillConfig() method was removed; its logic was merged into Driver.Configure(), which now returns (*ConfiguredDriver, error).
- The external driver gRPC server socket moved from the OS temp directory (/tmp/lima-driver-<name>-<pid>.sock) to the instance directory (~/.lima/<instance>/lima-driver-<name>.sock).
- External driver authors must update their drivers to match the new driver.Driver interface.

/tmp/lima is no longer mounted by default.
SSH port is no longer hard-coded to 60022 for the “default” instance.
Port forwarding with sudo nerdctl run -p no longer works with nerdctl prior to v2.1.6.
The default of guestIPMustBeZero was changed from false to true when guestIP is 0.0.0.0.

The lima-additional-guestagent package was split from the main lima package.

The default VM type was changed from qemu to vz on macOS hosts with the support for vz.
The default mount type was changed from reverse-sshfs to virtiofs for vz, 9p for qemu.
socket_vmnet binary has to be strictly owned by root.
The default value of ssh.loadDotSSHPubKeys was changed from true to false.
Several templates were removed or renamed.