GoKawiilProgress Report: Linux 7.0 Previous
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After almost three years of 6.x series kernels, Linux 7.0 is finally here. That means it’s also time for another Asahi progress report!
Automate Everything
Users of alternate distros and keen-eyed individuals may have noticed some changes to the Asahi Installer. After almost two years, we finally got around to pushing an updated version of the installer to the CDN! Two years is a long time to go between updates, so what took so long?
Our upstream installer package is a little bit of a Rube-Goldberg machine. The bulk of the installer is written in Python, with some small Bash scripts to bootstrap it. When you run curl | sh , you’re actually downloading the boostrap script, which then fetches the actual installer bundle from our CDN. This bundle consists of a Python interpreter and very stripped down standard library, a built m1n1 stage 1 binary, and the installer itself.
Until recently, cutting an installer release meant:
Tagging the installer repo Downloading a macOS Python build Building m1n1 from a blessed commit Bundling Python, m1n1 and the installer Uploading the installer bundle to the CDN Updating the CDN’s version flag file
This process was time-consuming and required administrative access to the CDN. As a result, we neglected to push installer updated for quite some time; the previous installer tag was from June 2024! As upstreaming work has progressed and Devicetree bindings churned, this became rather problematic for our friends maintaining distros.
The Asahi Installer offers a UEFI-only installation option. This option shrinks macOS and only installs what is necessary to boot a UEFI executable, meaning m1n1 stage 1, the Devicetrees, and U-Boot. This allows users to boot from live media with Asahi support, such as specialised Gentoo Asahi LiveCD images.
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