Lima

Highlights:

• Experimental plug-in subsystem for VM driver infrastructure.
  This will help implementing third-party plugins without modifying the code base of Lima.
  Thanks to GSoC 2025 contributor @unsuman .
• Add limactl (start|restart) --progress flag to show the progress of provisioning (#3846, #3915, thanks to @olamilekan000 @norio-nomura)
• Add limactl shell --preserve-env flag to propagate env vars from the host to VM (#3830, thanks to @olamilekan000)

Other notable changes:

• /tmp/lima is no longer m

Changes

• Cherry-picks from master to release/1.2 (#3750)
  • portfwd: create separate gRPC streams for each UDP client (#3724, thanks to @stek29)
  • qemuimgutil: fix "Failed to get "write" lock" error (#3742, thanks to @pavelanni)
  • Embed templates edited from the user interface (#3745, thanks to @afbjorklund)

Usage

$ limactl create
$ limactl start
...
INFO[0029] READY. Run `lima` to open the shell.
$ lima uname
Linux

The binaries were built automatically on GitHub Actions.
The build log is available for 90 days: https://github.com/lima-vm/lima/

Changes

• limactl CLI:
  • Add limactl network (list|create|delete) commands (#3677)
  • Add limactl clone OLDINST NEWINST command. Not to be confused with limactl copy, which copies files. (#3673)
  • Add limactl edit --mount-none flag (#3647)
• Port forwarding:
  • Improve stability (#3684. #3708, thanks to @balajiv113)
  • De-deprecate LIMA_SSH_PORT_FORWARDER that was once deprecated in v1.1 (#3709)
• nerdctl:
  • Update from v2.1.2 to v2.1.3 (#3701)
• Templates:
  • default: update from Ubuntu 24.10 to 25.04 (#3643)
  • <

Changes

• Fixed the guestagent path issues with Homebrew (#3566, thanks to @jandubois)
• Documentation for disk management https://lima-vm.io/docs/config/disk/ (#3539, thanks to @Sonichigo)

Usage

[macOS]$ limactl create
[macOS]$ limactl start
...
INFO[0029] READY. Run `lima` to open the shell.
[macOS]$ lima uname
Linux

The binaries were built automatically on GitHub Actions.
The build log is available for 90 days: https://github.com/lima-vm/lima/actions/runs/15178234655

The sha256sum of the SHA256SUMS file itself is 0d2d3fb073c8e26df163937dd605e9f2b9f227814a697411cc2b8879347bdd7f .

Highlights:

• Simplification of YAMLs
• New port forwarder implementation by default
• DragonflyBSD hosts
• S390X and PPC64LE guests
• Smaller binary packages

Changes

• Build system:
  • Split lima-additional-guestagents-*.tar.gz from lima-.tar.gz` (#3503)
  • Set CONFIG_GUESTAGENT_COMPRESS=y by default (#3529)
• YAML:
  • Support inheritance (#3072, thanks to @jandubois)
  • Deprecate provision mode ansible (#3451, thanks to @afbjorklund)
  • Add new provision mode data (#3302, thank

Highlights:

• Simplification of YAMLs
• New port forwarder implementation by default
• DragonflyBSD hosts
• S390X and PPC64LE guests
• Smaller binary packages

Changes

• Build system:
  • Split lima-additional-guestagents-*.tar.gz from lima-.tar.gz` (#3503)
  • Set CONFIG_GUESTAGENT_COMPRESS=y by default (#3529)
• YAML:
  • Support inheritance (#3072, thanks to @jandubois)
  • Deprecate provision mode ansible (#3451

Hint for package maintainers

Starting with v1.1, the official binary packages of Lima are split to two files for the each of the host OS and the architectures to save the disk space:

1. lima-<VERSION>-Darwin-arm64.tar.gz: (Built with make native)

• The core components (bin/lima, bin/limactl, share/lima/templates, ...)
• The guest agent for the native architecture (share/lima/lima-guestagent.Linux-aarch64.gz)

1. lima-additional-guestagents-<VERSION>-Darwin-arm64.tar.gz: (Built with make additional-guestagents)

• The guest agents for emulating non

Changes

• YAML: support inheritance (#3072, thanks to @jandubois)
• QEMU:
  • Support DragonflyBSD hosts (#3356, thanks to @tuxillo)
  • Support S390X guests (#3319)
• WSL2: lots of improvements (several PRs, thanks to @arixmkii)
• Port forwarding: enable faster gRPC implementation by default (#3046)
• limactl CLI:
  • Add --yes flag as an alias of --tty=false (#3342, thanks to @suryaaprakassh)
• Rootless Containers:
  • Allow UID >= 524288 (#3435)
• Templat

Changes

• YAML: support inheritance (#3072, thanks to @jandubois)
• QEMU:
  • Support DragonflyBSD hosts (#3356, thanks to @tuxillo)
  • Support S390X guests (#3319)
• WSL2: lots of improvements (several PRs, thanks to @arixmkii)

Full changes: https://github.com/lima-vm/lima/milestone/26?closed=1
Thanks to @arixmkii @jandubois @kairveeehh @nirs @tatucosmin @tuxillo @unsuman

Usage

[macOS]$ limactl create
[macOS]$ limactl start

QEMU:

• Revert "Restrict pessimization of M4 arch to macOS 15.2"; upgrade Cortex-A72 to Cortex-A76 (#3227)

YAML:

• Support customizing user shell (#3207, thanks to @afbjorklund)

Full changes: https://github.com/lima-vm/lima/milestone/56?closed=1

Thanks to @afbjorklund @alexandear @kairveeehh

Usage

[macOS]$ limactl create
[macOS]$ limactl start
...
INFO[0029] READY. Run `lima` to open the shell.
[macOS]$ lima uname
Linux

The binaries were built automatically on GitHub Actions.
The build log is available for 90 days: https://github.com/lima-vm/lima/actions/runs/13297347764

Changes

• limactl CLI:
  • Fix start command: return error early when instance already exists (#3144, thanks to @jandubois)
• DNS:
  • Fix a regression containers/gvisor-tap-vsock#466 (#3189)
• QEMU:
  • Enable SME on macOS 15.3 running on M4 (#3197, #3203, thanks to @jandubois)

Full changes: https://github.com/lima-vm/lima/milestone/55?closed=1
Thanks to @alexandear @arixmkii @jandubois @msgilligan @olamilekan000 @rfay @s1gnate-sync

Usage

[macOS]$ limactl create
[macOS]$ limactl start