(And to some extent a Linux bootloader)

You need an aarch64-linux-gnu-gcc cross-compiler toolchain (or a native one, if running on ARM64). You also need dtc (the devicetree compiler) and convert (from ImageMagick) for the boot logos.

$ git clone --recursive https://github.com/AsahiLinux/m1n1.git
$ cd m1n1
$ make

The output will be in build/m1n1.macho.

To build on a native arm64 machine, use make ARCH=.

If you have a container runtime installed, like Podman or Docker, you can make use of the compose setup, which contains all build dependencies.

$ git clone --recursive https://github.com/AsahiLinux/m1n1.git
$ cd m1n1
$ podman-compose run m1n1 make
$ # or
$ docker-compose run m1n1 make

Our developer quickstart guide has more information on how to use m1n1.

m1n1 supports running payloads by simple concatenation:

$ cat build/m1n1.macho Image.gz build/dtb/apple-j274.dtb initramfs.cpio.gz > m1n1-payload.macho

Supported payload file formats:

• Kernel images (or compatible). Must be compressed or last payload.
• Devicetree blobs (FDT). May be uncompressed or compressed.
• Initramfs cpio images. Must be compressed.

Supported compression formats:

• gzip
• xz

m1n1 is licensed under the MIT license, as included in the LICENSE file.

• Copyright (C) 2021 The Asahi Linux contributors

Please see the Git history for authorship information.

Portions of m1n1 are based on mini:

• Copyright (C) 2008-2010 Hector Martin "marcan" [email protected]
• Copyright (C) 2008-2010 Sven Peter [email protected]
• Copyright (C) 2008-2010 Andre Heider [email protected]

m1n1 embeds libfdt, which is dual BSD and GPL-2 licensed and copyright:

• Copyright (C) 2014 David Gibson [email protected]
• Copyright (C) 2018 embedded brains GmbH
• Copyright (C) 2006-2012 David Gibson, IBM Corporation.
• Copyright (C) 2012 David Gibson, IBM Corporation.
• Copyright 2012 Kim Phillips, Freescale Semiconductor.
• Copyright (C) 2016 Free Electrons
• Copyright (C) 2016 NextThing Co.

The ADT code in mini is also based on libfdt and subject to the same license.

m1n1 embeds minlzma, which is MIT licensed and copyright:

• Copyright (c) 2020 Alex Ionescu

m1n1 embeds a slightly modified version of tinf, which is ZLIB licensed and copyright:

• Copyright (c) 2003-2019 Joergen Ibsen

m1n1 embeds portions taken from arm-trusted-firwmare, which is BSD licensed and copyright:

• Copyright (c) 2013-2020, ARM Limited and Contributors. All rights reserved.

m1n1 embeds Doug Lea's malloc (dlmalloc), which is in the public domain (CC0).

m1n1 embeds portions of PDCLib, which is in the public domain (CC0).