8.1 Overview

This chapter describes in detail the steps that are accomplished by the AutoGen stage, which is the first step of building a platform or a module.

Figure 19 EDK II AutoGen Process

The first file the build tool is looking for in AutoGen stage is target.txt in directory $(WORKSPACE)/Conf. All the configurations in target.txt can be overridden by command line options of build tool. If no platform description file is specified in either target.txt and command line, the build tool will try to find one in current directory. And if build tool finds a description file of a module (INF file) in current directory, it will try to build just that module only rather than building a whole platform.

Once the build tool gets what to build and how to build, it starts to parse the platform description file (DSC). From the DSC file, the build tools will locate the INF files for all modules and libraries, as well as other settings of the platform (including DEC specified default values for PCDs used by modules and libraries that do not have values specified in the DSC file).

From module description files, the build tool will find out what package description files the module depends on. In this way, the build tool will find out and parse all modules and packages that make up a platform.

The next thing to do in the AutoGen stage is to generate files required to build a module. The files include: AutoGen.h, AutoGen.c, $(BASENAME).depex and Makefile.

AutoGen.c and $(BASENAME).depex files will not be generated for library modules, and $(BASENAME).depex file is generated only if there's [Depex] section found in the module's INF file.

Each module found in DSC file will have a makefile generated for it. Once all of the makefiles have been generated, the build tool will call nmake (or make) for each module's Makefile.

Note: When building a module, only the module's makefile will be called.