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Kamila Szewczyk 9c3ead9386 decompressor: gzip/tinf -> limlz

removes external dependency on tinf by replacing the compression algorithm with a simpler, faster, smaller and more auditable fixed-width LZ77 encoding purpose-tailored to x86 code mixed with data.

before: decompressor.bin 2,492 bytes (tinf dependency) with .text 0x875 and .rodata 0x13c bytes each.
after: decompressor.bin consists only of .text, 0xe6-byte decompressor; 90.8% reduction in decompressor volume.

the dependency on gzip during compile-time is replaced by host/limlzpack.c, a Lempel-Ziv encoder in 275 SLoC that uses a suffix array matchfinder (prefix-doubling in mathcal O(n log^2 n) and Storer-Szymanski backwards parse. the fixed-width formats packets as [F][LLLL][MMM], favouring a literal-skewed distribution with F switching between one-byte and two-byte offsets (favouring recent statistics).

integrity checking is done via crc32 with the polynomial 0xEDB88320, reflected.

the effective loss in compression ratio by using a tremendously simpler and less packed with edge cases algorithm causes a compression ratio hit well below 1KB, factoring in the stub sizes.

also adds new machinery for host cc detection per review.

2026-04-19 00:29:09 +02:00

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Build and Install Instructions

NOTE: This document is about building and installing Limine. For information about deployment for usage, see USAGE.md.

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, 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.

NOTE: ./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

To build Limine, run:

make    # (or gmake where applicable)

Installing

This step will install Limine files to share, include, and bin directories in the specified prefix (default is /usr/local, see ./configure --help.

To install Limine, run:

make install    # (or gmake where applicable)