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BUILDING.md

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Building and running UEFI applications

UEFI binaries

UEFI applications are simple COFF (Windows) executables, with the special EFI_Application subsystem, and some limitations (such as no dynamic linking).

The Rust compiler supports building UEFI applications for the aarch64-unknown-uefi, i686-unknown-uefi, and x86_64-unknown-uefi targets.

Building

  • Install a nightly version of the Rust toolchain:

    rustup toolchain install nightly

    It is not currently possible to build the core crate with a stable version of the Rust compiler.

  • You need to add the rust-src toolchain component (if it's not already installed), which Cargo will use to build the core crates for the UEFI target:

    rustup component add --toolchain nightly rust-src

  • Build this crate using the nightly toolchain:

    cargo +nightly build --target x86_64-unknown-uefi.

  • The target directory will contain a x86_64-unknown-uefi subdirectory, where you will find a <crate name>.efi file - a normal UEFI executable.

Running

  • To run an .efi executable on a real computer:

    • Find a USB drive which is FAT12 / FAT16 / FAT32 formatted
    • Copy the file to the USB drive, to /EFI/Boot/Bootx64.efi
    • In the UEFI BIOS, choose "Boot from USB" or similar

  • To run this in QEMU:

    • You will need a recent version of QEMU as well as OVMF to provide UEFI support

    • Check the qemu.rs module for an idea of what arguments to pass to QEMU.

      In principle, you need to replicate the file structure described above for an USB drive, then mount the directory as if it were a FAT drive.

Template

The template provides a quick way to get started building UEFI applications.