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How to build OVMF

Brian Richardson edited this page Apr 25, 2017 · 5 revisions

Building OVMF is fairly easy once you have installed a few pre-requisites. Please note, however, that building OVMF is not required if you are only interested in running OVMF, since we have provided pre-built binaries of OVMF.

Build Pre-requisites

  • A edk2 build tree capable of building UEFI images
    • If you are new to edk2 building then these getting started instructions may be helpful.
  • An ASL compiler configured in your edk2 build tree
    • Either the IASL compiler or the Microsoft ASL compiler can be used
      • For Unix-like operating systems, IASL is the only option:
        • For newer Linux distributions, you should be able to install iasl via the distribution's package management system. (This page may help.)
        • Or, the Unix-like systems getting started guide includes details for installing IASL as well.
      • For Windows, you can download pre-built version of IASL compiler from http://www.acpica.org.
      • For Windows, you can also download a pre-built version of the Microsoft ASL compiler from http://www.acpi.info.

Choosing which version of OVMF to build

First decide which version of OVMF you will build. You can choose to build the IA32 processor architecture and/or the X64 processor architecture. You should take into account the processor architectures which your toolchain is capable of building. Depending upon which you select, you should modify the ACTIVE_PLATFORM and TARGET_ARCH in Conf/target.txt.

ACTIVE_PLATFORM TARGET_ARCH PEI code DXE/UEFI code
OvmfPkg/OvmfPkgIa32.dsc IA32 IA32 IA32
OvmfPkg/OvmfPkgIa32X64.dsc IA32 X64 IA32 X64
OvmfPkg/OvmfPkgX64.dsc X64 X64 X64

Example: Conf/target.txt values to build x64 UEFI image for OVMF using GCC5 compiler:

ACTIVE_PLATFORM       = OvmfPkg/OvmfPkgX64.dsc
TARGET_ARCH           = X64
TOOL_CHAIN_TAG        = GCC5

Once you have modified Conf/target.txt, you can run the build command.

bash$ build

If successful, you should now have a OVMF.Fd file under the Build sub-directory. The exact directory under the Build directory will depend upon the toolchain, dsc and processor architecture.

You can use OVMF.Fd to run OVMF.

See Also

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