slinstaller

The system installer for Sunlight Linux, a UEFI-only Linux distribution.

Status: early bootstrap. This repository is being seeded. The first iteration is a fork of void-installer — the installer shipped in void-mklive — as a beta stopgap; the long-term target is a ground-up rewrite in Go, modeled on clr-installer.

What it does

slinstaller partitions the target disk, lays down the Sunlight Linux base system, installs the bootloader, and configures the first boot — including slinit as PID 1.

Target requirements

• UEFI firmware. Sunlight Linux is UEFI-only: the installer creates a GPT layout with an EFI System Partition (ESP) and registers a boot entry with efibootmgr. BIOS/MBR boot is not supported.

Building / Running

Implementation is in progress; the commands below describe the intended flow.

• Go target:

  go build ./...      # produces the slinstaller binary
  go test ./...

• Stopgap (void-installer fork): shell-based; runs as root from the live medium. The live medium / ISO is built with void-mklive, which is also where upstream void-installer lives.

⚠️ The installer performs destructive, irreversible operations (partitioning, formatting, bootloader install). Always exercise changes in a VM (QEMU + OVMF for UEFI) against a scratch image — never on a disk with data you care about.

Where this fits

slinstaller is one of the five projects in the Sunlight Linux tree, wired up via slmanifests:

repo init -u https://github.com/sunlightlinux/slmanifests.git -b main
repo sync -j4
# slinstaller lands at src/installer/

Documentation

• CONTRIBUTING.md — how to contribute (and the safety rules)
• SECURITY.md — reporting security issues
• CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md — community standards
• CLAUDE.md / EXAMPLES.md — guidelines for LLM-assisted work on the installer

License

Apache License 2.0.