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Installation

Supported host OS:

  • macOS (the latest version is recommended)
  • Linux
  • NetBSD (untested)
  • DragonFlyBSD (untested)
  • Windows (untested)

Prerequisite:

  • QEMU (Required, only if QEMU driver is used)
brew install lima

Homebrew formula is available here. Supports macOS and Linux.

sudo port install lima

Port: https://ports.macports.org/port/lima/

nix-env -i lima

Nix file: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/pkgs/by-name/li/lima/package.nix

Download the binary archive of Lima from https://github.com/lima-vm/lima/releases, and extract it under /usr/local (or somewhere else).

VERSION=$(curl -fsSL https://api.github.com/repos/lima-vm/lima/releases/latest | jq -r .tag_name)
curl -fsSL "https://github.com/lima-vm/lima/releases/download/${VERSION}/lima-${VERSION:1}-$(uname -s)-$(uname -m).tar.gz" | tar Cxzvm /usr/local

# For Lima v1.1 onward
curl -fsSL "https://github.com/lima-vm/lima/releases/download/${VERSION}/lima-additional-guestagents-${VERSION:1}-$(uname -s)-$(uname -m).tar.gz" | tar Cxzvm /usr/local

1 - Source Installation

Installing from Source

If you prefer to build Lima from source, follow these steps:

Prerequisites

Ensure you have the following dependencies installed:

  • git
  • go
  • make

Build and Install

Run the following commands:

git clone https://github.com/lima-vm/lima
cd lima
make
sudo make install

Note: sudo make install is required unless you have write permissions for /usr/local. Otherwise, installation may fail.

Alternative Installation (Without Sudo)

If you prefer installing Lima in your home directory, configure the PREFIX and PATH as follows:

make PREFIX=$HOME/.local install
export PATH=$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH

Packaging Lima for Distribution

After building Lima from source, you may want to package it for installation on other machines:

  1. The package for the core component and the native guest agent:
make clean native
cd _output
tar czf lima-package.tar.gz *
  1. The package for the additional guest agents:
make clean additional-guestagents
cd _output
tar czf lima-additional-guestagents-package.tar.gz *

These packages can then be transferred and installed on the target system.

Advanced Configuration with Kconfig Tools

(This step is not needed for most users)

To change the build configuration such as the guest architectures, run:

make config  # For text-based configuration
make menuconfig  # For a menu-based configuration

This requires Kconfig tools to be installed. It is also possible to manually edit .config. The default configuration can be found in config.mk (which follows make syntax).

The tools are available as either kconfig-frontends or kbuild-standalone. There are two interfaces:

  • conf for text-based configuration.
  • mconf for a menu-driven interface.

A Python implementation is available at Kconfiglib. It can be installed with:

pip install --user kconfiglib

This also includes support for guiconfig (GUI-based configuration).