How to build OVMF

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

• https://github.com/tianocore/edk2/blob/master/OvmfPkg/README