HOW-TO: Set Up The EDK's Windows-Hosted UEFI Environment With Visual Studio 2008.

Since I'm working on a little research project of my own using UEFI applications, I thought I'd use the Windows-hosted UEFI (aka NT32) environment provided with the EDK. From previous experience, I know that the ability to debug applications using the Visual Studio environment speeds up my development time considerably. So I thought I'd share how I set up my environment. Then next time, I'll share how I set up for debugging.

This article assumes that you have Visual Studio 2008 installed and that the EDK has been downloaded to C:\EDK.

Create New Visual Studio Project
In this step, the goal is to set up Visual Studio so that it can build the Windows-hosted (NT32) UEFI environment. The build files for this project are located in C:\EDK\SAMPLE\PLATFORM\NT32.

1. Select File|New|Project.

2. Select the "General" project category and select "Makefile Project". Then enter the Name as "NT32". Then click "OK".

3. The Makefile Project Wizard will pop up. Click "Finish"

4. Your new project will appear in the Solution Explorer.

5. Select the NT32 project with the mouse. Select Project|Properties.

6. On the "NT32 Property Pages", change "Configuration" to "All Configurations".

7. Select "Build Command Line" and then select the ... on the right edge.

8. This will pop up a separate editor box. On three separate lines, enter the following text and click "OK".

cd /D c:\edk\sample\platform\nt32
set EDK_SOURCE=c:\edk
call build.bat

9. Now, for "Rebuild All Command Line" enter:

cd /D c:\edk\sample\platform\nt32

set EDK_SOURCE=c:\edk
call build.bat clean
call build.bat

10. Now, for "Clean Command Line" enter:

cd /D c:\edk\sample\platform\nt32

set EDK_SOURCE=c:\edk
call build.bat clean

11. Finally, for the last step, enter:

c:\edk\sample\platform\nt32\uefi\ia32\SecMain.exe

12. Select OK.












13. Edit Config.env, which is located in C:\EDK\Sample\Platform\NT32\Build, and change USE_VC8 = YES. By default, it is set to NO, which will build with Visual Studio 2003 and a large number of build errors.

Launching The Windows-Hosted Environment.
At this point, should be able to build by selecting Build|Build (or using F7). You can run the emulated environment by going to the command prompt and typing:

cd /d c:\edk\sample\platform\nt32\uefi\ia32
SecMain.exe

You will see (at least) two windows: the debug output console window and then the graphics output window. The graphics output window will show a fake logo, a progress bar and then boot into the built-in EFI Shell.



Conclusion
Well, that gets us to the first step. Next time we'll discuss how to set up the debugger and how to make your code debugger friendly.