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UEFI Firmware Engineer here. Always happy to see the domain get a bit more mainstream exposure. The part of this article that stuck out to me was the off-hand c

UEFI Firmware Engineer here. Always happy to see the domain get a bit more mainstream exposure. The part of this article that stuck out to me was the off-hand comment about the number of people who could raise their hand that have experience with UEFI firmware. It is an incredibly small industry with some huge players. You go to firmware conferences sponsored by Intel, ARM, IBM, Microsoft, Apple, among others and it's the same few hundred people just switching companies.

non-entity 6y ago
I've tried to get in UEFI development before but it was such a pain. Specifically, trying to read the edk2 docs was a pain as they seem to not be updated (the most accessible docs were referencing rather old Ububtu and gcc versions and I was even finding references to Visual Studio 2003). I also managed to find a bug in the project scaffolding tool they provide but I couldn't find a way to report bugs and I didn't bother fixing a submitting a PR because the last commit was 8 years old and there wasn't a sign that anyone else had ever done so. > You go to firmware conferences sponsored by Intel, ARM, IBM, Microsoft, Apple, among others and it's the same few hundred people just switching companies. Can't speak specifically to UEFI firware stuffm, but my experience with similar domains (that have a small number of really smart, but primarily professional members) is that they don't tend to be very "welcoming" to beginners.
- matthewfcarlson 6y ago
  Yeah the docs have been a sort of pain for quite a few folks. We had some new team members join our team and revealed how much of our process is focused on being next to someone to ask questions while you're trying to figure out how to make your project boot. Part of the problem comes from the fact that until fairly recently, UEFI didn't have a great emulated platform so you could build stuff but unless you had the exact hardware (that often comes with NDA code that can be hard to get a hold of), tutorials are not very helpful/rewarding. Yah, lots of communities have established rules and even as a relative newcomer myself, getting something into EDK2 is a long and somewhat arduous process. They don't accept PRs, it's all over mailing lists. https://microsoft.github.io/mu https://microsoft.github.io/mu if you're curious about
rmrfstar 6y ago
Serious question. Why are we still using UEFI? From an end-user perspective, Coreboot+$PAYLOAD >> UEFI.
drudru11 6y ago
Do most people have to go through all of this ceremony or is there typically a JTAG port on a motherboard that will do the trick?
- rmrfstar 6y ago
  Depends on the context. If you want direct access to the hardware, you'll typically attach IC hooks to the SPI chip itself, and read/write with flashrom. It's almost always a chunky soic-8 package. https://libreboot.org/docs/install/c201.html#installing-libreboot-externally-with-a-spi-flash-programmer https://libreboot.org/docs/install/c201.html#installing-libr...

non-entity 6y ago

I've tried to get in UEFI development before but it was such a pain. Specifically, trying to read the edk2 docs was a pain as they seem to not be updated (the most accessible docs were referencing rather old Ububtu and gcc versions and I was even finding references to Visual Studio 2003). I also managed to find a bug in the project scaffolding tool they provide but I couldn't find a way to report bugs and I didn't bother fixing a submitting a PR because the last commit was 8 years old and there wasn't a sign that anyone else had ever done so. > You go to firmware conferences sponsored by Intel, ARM, IBM, Microsoft, Apple, among others and it's the same few hundred people just switching companies. Can't speak specifically to UEFI firware stuffm, but my experience with similar domains (that have a small number of really smart, but primarily professional members) is that they don't tend to be very "welcoming" to beginners.

matthewfcarlson 6y ago
Yeah the docs have been a sort of pain for quite a few folks. We had some new team members join our team and revealed how much of our process is focused on being next to someone to ask questions while you're trying to figure out how to make your project boot. Part of the problem comes from the fact that until fairly recently, UEFI didn't have a great emulated platform so you could build stuff but unless you had the exact hardware (that often comes with NDA code that can be hard to get a hold of), tutorials are not very helpful/rewarding. Yah, lots of communities have established rules and even as a relative newcomer myself, getting something into EDK2 is a long and somewhat arduous process. They don't accept PRs, it's all over mailing lists. https://microsoft.github.io/mu https://microsoft.github.io/mu if you're curious about

rmrfstar 6y ago

Serious question. Why are we still using UEFI? From an end-user perspective, Coreboot+$PAYLOAD >> UEFI.

drudru11 6y ago

Do most people have to go through all of this ceremony or is there typically a JTAG port on a motherboard that will do the trick?

rmrfstar 6y ago
Depends on the context. If you want direct access to the hardware, you'll typically attach IC hooks to the SPI chip itself, and read/write with flashrom. It's almost always a chunky soic-8 package. https://libreboot.org/docs/install/c201.html#installing-libreboot-externally-with-a-spi-flash-programmer https://libreboot.org/docs/install/c201.html#installing-libr...