README.md

The description

This is the VisualUEFI like project, but configurated to use the Clang compiler and emit DWARF debug information. It gives you a possibility to debug your UEFI applications in the source level on Windows using Vmware Workstation and GDB.

Installation

Install nasm https://www.nasm.us/ and add NASM\ folder to the PATH variable, install Clang https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/build/clang-support-msbuild?view=msvc-170#install-1 and build edk2 libs project. At this point you are ready to build the main project in the samples folder.

Environment setting

I will cover setting up and using Clion as a GDB frontend. This is the easiest and hassle-free option. First, open the virtual machine's .vmx configuration file and put in these lines.

debugStub.listen.guest64 = "TRUE"
debugStub.port.guest64 = "55555"
debugStub.hideBreakpoints = "TRUE"

Next, you need to open the run \ debug configurations menu.

Add a new configuration.

Select remote debug and fill the connection information like below.

Then launch a virtual machine and load your UEFI application. You should use a dead loop in your app where an application waits for a debugger in an endless loop. After this we start remote debugging in Clion and pause code execution. After pausing enter add-symbol-file path_to_your_executable to GDB console. There is one important moment to mention - you should have at least 1 GB of RAM in your VM, because otherwise the application possibly can be loaded at any random address and in this case you have to specify with the last argument the address of the text section of the binary: add-symbol-file path_to_your_executable 0x<text_section_address>. By default a base address is 0xD846000, so if you have 1 GB of RAM, then you can skip this argument and leave the work for GDB.

P.S. Ensure that your Vmware Workstation isn't launched in the compatability mode with Hyper-V using Windows Hypervisor Platform (WHP), because in this case GDB stub just crashes a VM when you try to load symbols.

Put a breakpoint at an endless loop, change a loop condition variable and after this you can freely do the source level debugging of your code.