These instructions assume you have installed Linux packages required for an EDK II build environment, including git (example: 16.04/16.10). The following instructions are common to the majority of Linux environments.

bash$ mkdir ~/src
bash$ cd ~/src
bash$ git clone https://github.com/tianocore/edk2

Note: the 'git clone' command above pulls the latest code from edk2. If you want to work from a stable release, specify a release tag when cloning. Example:

bash$ git clone https://github.com/tianocore/edk2.git vUDK2017

bash$ cd ~/src/edk2
bash$ make -C BaseTools
bash$ . edksetup.sh

When the above steps are done, you can work in the edk2 directory for code development.

bash$ make -C edk2/BaseTools

bash$ cd ~/src/edk2
bash$ export EDK_TOOLS_PATH=$HOME/src/edk2/BaseTools
bash$ . edksetup.sh BaseTools

Running edksetup.sh populates the edk2/Conf directory with default configuration files. You will need to edit the Conf/target.txt file to set the build platform, target architecture, tool chain, and multi-threading options. The example below is based on building the MdeModulePkg using GCC5.

For the Conf/target.txt file, find the following lines:

ACTIVE_PLATFORM       = Nt32Pkg/Nt32Pkg.dsc
TOOL_CHAIN_TAG        = MYTOOLS

And change the corresponding lines to match these:

ACTIVE_PLATFORM       = MdeModulePkg/MdeModulePkg.dsc
TOOL_CHAIN_TAG        = GCC5

Note: The gcc --version command can be used to find out your GCC version. Use the GCC45 toolchain for gcc 4.5.* and the GCC46 toolchain for gcc 4.6.*.

Note: for GCC5 please install the gcc-5 package. Example for Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install gcc-5

Locate the TARGET_ARCH setting:

TARGET_ARCH           = IA32

Change this reflect the build architecture for the final UEFI binary.

Example: X64, IA32 X64 (which will build both architectures).

Optional: enable multi-threaded build. The default value for MAX_CONCURRENT_THREAD_NUMBER is 1, which disables multi-threaded build. Change this value based on your system's multi-threading capabilities. The formula is '1 + (2 x processor threads)'.

Example: for an Intel Core i5 (two processor cores w/ hyperthreading), the value is 9.

Now you should be able to simply run the build command to compile MdeModulePkg.

bash$ build

One result of the build is that you should have the HelloWorld UEFI application:

bash$ ls Build/MdeModule/DEBUG_*/*/HelloWorld.efi

Once your build environment is set up you might be interested in building the OVMF platform which is included in the main EDK II source tree. Since OVMF builds a full system firmware image, this may be of interest to UEFI system firmware developers.