Getting Started with EDK II

  Note: New build instructions are available. It is recommended to start with the new instructions if learning how to
        build edk2 for the first time. This page is retained for reference.

New instructions: Build Instructions

Downloading and Compiling Code

This page shows the steps for downloading EDK II from GitHub and compiling projects under various OS/compiler environments.

How to Setup a Local EDK II Tree

Several build environments are supported and documented. If instructions are not available for your exact system configuration, you may still be able to tweak the instructions to work on your system.

• Linux: Using EDK II with Native GCC (recommended for current versions of Linux)
• Microsoft Windows: Windows systems (Win7/8/8.1/10)
• Mac OS X: Xcode
• UNIX: Unix-like systems (For non-Linux UNIX, older Linux distros, or when using Cygwin)

Note: Some other build tools may be required depending on the project or package:

• Nasm
• ASL Compiler
• Install Python 3.7 or later (https://www.python.org/) to run python tool from source
  • Python 2.7.10 or later can still be used with PYTHON_HOME

Note: Some of the examples use the Multiple_Workspace `PACKAGES_PATH` feature to the configure EDK II build environment. For example, this is required for using platform code based on edk2-platforms: (https://github.com/tianocore/edk2-platforms).

Once you have a basic build environment running, you can build a project in RELEASE or DEBUG mode.

GitHub Help

GitHub (https://help.github.com/index.html) provides step-by-step instructions for user registration and basic features supported by GitHub

• Setup GitHub for Linux/Windows/MAC (https://help.github.com/articles/set-up-git)
• Download and install a git GUI interface: git GUI Clients (https://git-scm.com/download/gui/win) | TortoiseGit (https://tortoisegit.org/)

GitHub EDK II Project Repositories

• The EDK II project repository is available at https://github.com/tianocore/edk2.
• Prebuilt Windows tools are available at https://github.com/tianocore/edk2-BaseTools-win32.
• EDK II Platforms are available at https://github.com/tianocore/edk2-platforms.
• Content that is not released under an accepted open source license can be found at https://github.com/tianocore/edk2-non-osi.

EDK II Development Process

After setting up your build environment see EDK II Development Process for making contributions to the EDK II Project.

Further Help

If you have questions about the code or run into obstacles getting things to work, please join the EDK II developer Mailing-Lists and ask your EDK II related questions on the list.

For info on writing a simple UEFI EDK II Application, see: Getting Started Writing Simple Application

To review the basic setup of .DSC, .DEC, and .INF files, see: Build Description Files