Quick start

Most of the extension functionality will work out of the box on any given EDK2 project. However it will have the full set of features enabled when the source code its compiled and the Index database is loaded.

Rebuild Index Database

Once you source code its compiled you create your workspace index with the following command from the command palette:

> EDK2: Rebuild index database

Vscode will ask you to select your build directory. After that it will detect the compilations inside your build directory, you can chose a single or multiple compilations to be loaded in your index:

Enable compile information

You can use the compile information build feature from EDK2 to provide more build information to the extension. This is optional but recommended

To enable the compile information you need to enable the build report flag in the EDK2 build command and set -Y COMPILE_INFO. You can check more information about EDK build process here

For example, if you want to build EmulatorPkg from EDK2 source, your build command will look like this:

build -p EmulatorPkg\EmulatorPkg.dsc -t VS2019 -a IA32 -Y COMPILE_INFO -y BuildReport.log

This will generate compile information in your build folder.

-Y COMPILE_INFO -y BuildReport.log will add to your build folder the CompileInfo folder:

x:\Edk2\Build\EmulatorIA32\DEBUG_VS2019\CompileInfo

Files produced after parsing

After parsing is completed, some files will be created in .edkCode folder on your workspace.

.ignore

This is a list of all your the files in your source that were not used during compilation. The generation of this file can be disabled in the extension settings. This file is used by VSCODE to ignore unused files. You can toggle the use of .ignore file in search:

compile_commands.json

This is the compilation database generated during build process. You can setup your C/C++ VSCODE plugging to use this compilation database to get better C parsing.

To setup compile commands in your workspace, open C/C++: edit configurations (UI) in command palette. Under Advance Settings look for Compile commands property. Set the path for ${workspaceFolder}\.edkCode\compile_commands.json as shown in the following image:

The EDK2Code extension will detect if compile_commands.json exists and will prompt the user to update the configuration

cscope.files

This is the list of all your files used in compilation. This file is used by Cscope to help provide C definitions.