*BinPkg question

*BinPkg question

[Blibbet]

I've been working on building thumbdrives that boot into the UEFI Shell,
and have a few end-user questions, please.

I've always been unclear which version of EFI/UEFI Apple includes on
their hardware. Are the older EdkShellBinPkg shells suitable for modern
Apple boxes, or will the modern UEFI Shell work on them?

What is the point of shipping compiled full/minimal UEFI Shells, and not
shipping the related external tools? I presumed the point of shipping
the shell.efi binaries in the EDK2 was to help users who need to add a
shell to their system for some diagnostic reasons. If that's the point,
wouldn't it be useful to have the related external shell commands that
help with diagnosis and configuring boot### variables?

It appears older EFI Shell did include external binaries, but results
vary greatly by architecture, it appears AArch32 includes the most
commands. Some use an ./Apps subdirectory, others do not.

https://github.com/tianocore/edk2/tree/master/EdkShellBinPkg/Bin/

but modern bin package only include shells (and omits IPF binaries,
unlike earlier EdkShellBinPkg):

https://github.com/tianocore/edk2/tree/master/ShellBinPkg

I am unclear why include just a shell and not include the related
external commands in the ShellBinPkg.

Is there a reason for modern released systems that these older
EdkShellBinPkg shells/commands will be needed?

Is there another source of precompiled external shell commands, beyond
ShellBinPkg, that would work with the shells included in the ShellBinPkg?

The target audience for this is sysadmins, so telling them to build it
from source is not an option for audience.

Thanks for *any* advise!

Lee Fisher

Re: *BinPkg question

[Carsey, Jaben]

Few thoughts - with the UEFI Shell Specification complaint shell binary from ShellBinPkg (not the minimal one of course), you have all the documented commands.  There was no reason to provide individual binaries per command.  That was dropped completely with the standardization with the spec.  What "external command" is missing from the shell?  Except for the DP command (which is not in the spec), I am unaware of "missing" commands.

BCFG command can configure the BOOTXXXX and DRIVERXXXX variables.

-Jaben

> -----Original Message-----
> From: edk2-devel [mailto:edk2-devel-bounces@lists.01.org] On Behalf Of
> Blibbet
> Sent: Saturday, March 04, 2017 1:14 PM
> To: edk2-devel@lists.01.org
> Subject: [edk2] *BinPkg question
> Importance: High
> 
> I've been working on building thumbdrives that boot into the UEFI Shell,
> and have a few end-user questions, please.
> 
> I've always been unclear which version of EFI/UEFI Apple includes on
> their hardware. Are the older EdkShellBinPkg shells suitable for modern
> Apple boxes, or will the modern UEFI Shell work on them?
> 
> What is the point of shipping compiled full/minimal UEFI Shells, and not
> shipping the related external tools? I presumed the point of shipping
> the shell.efi binaries in the EDK2 was to help users who need to add a
> shell to their system for some diagnostic reasons. If that's the point,
> wouldn't it be useful to have the related external shell commands that
> help with diagnosis and configuring boot### variables?
> 
> It appears older EFI Shell did include external binaries, but results
> vary greatly by architecture, it appears AArch32 includes the most
> commands. Some use an ./Apps subdirectory, others do not.
> 
> https://github.com/tianocore/edk2/tree/master/EdkShellBinPkg/Bin/
> 
> but modern bin package only include shells (and omits IPF binaries,
> unlike earlier EdkShellBinPkg):
> 
> https://github.com/tianocore/edk2/tree/master/ShellBinPkg
> 
> I am unclear why include just a shell and not include the related
> external commands in the ShellBinPkg.
> 
> Is there a reason for modern released systems that these older
> EdkShellBinPkg shells/commands will be needed?
> 
> Is there another source of precompiled external shell commands, beyond
> ShellBinPkg, that would work with the shells included in the ShellBinPkg?
> 
> The target audience for this is sysadmins, so telling them to build it
> from source is not an option for audience.
> 
> Thanks for *any* advise!
> 
> Lee Fisher
> 
> _______________________________________________
> edk2-devel mailing list
> edk2-devel@lists.01.org
> https://lists.01.org/mailman/listinfo/edk2-devel

Re: *BinPkg question

[Blibbet]

I had missed the shell's ability to do this with commands, and thought
they always had to be external *.efi files. Thanks for the
clarification. That is great news.

Lee

On 03/06/2017 08:33 AM, Carsey, Jaben wrote:
> Few thoughts - with the UEFI Shell Specification complaint shell
binary from ShellBinPkg (not the minimal one of course), you have all
the documented commands.  There was no reason to provide individual
binaries per command.  That was dropped completely with the
standardization with the spec.  What "external command" is missing from
the shell?  Except for the DP command (which is not in the spec), I am
unaware of "missing" commands.
>
> BCFG command can configure the BOOTXXXX and DRIVERXXXX variables.
>
> -Jaben