Limine Zig Template

This repository will demonstrate how to set up a basic kernel in Zig using Limine.

How to use this?

Dependencies

Any make command depends on GNU make (gmake) and is expected to be run using it. This usually means using make on most GNU/Linux distros, or gmake on other non-GNU systems.

A Zig compiler is required to build the kernel. Minimum supported version is 0.14.0. You can install Zig from the official website.

Additionally, building an ISO with make all requires xorriso, and building a HDD/USB image with make all-hdd requires sgdisk (usually from gdisk or gptfdisk packages) and mtools.

Architectural targets

The ARCH make variable determines the target architecture to build the kernel and image for.

The default ARCH is x86_64. Other options include: aarch64, loongarch64, and riscv64.

Makefile targets

Running make all will compile the kernel (from the kernel/ directory) and then generate a bootable ISO image.

Running make all-hdd will compile the kernel and then generate a raw image suitable to be flashed onto a USB stick or hard drive/SSD.

Running make run will build the kernel and a bootable ISO (equivalent to make all) and then run it using qemu (if installed).

Running make run-hdd will build the kernel and a raw HDD image (equivalent to make all-hdd) and then run it using qemu (if installed).

For x86_64, the run-bios and run-hdd-bios targets are equivalent to their non -bios counterparts except that they boot qemu using the default SeaBIOS firmware instead of OVMF.