TianocoreEDK

TianoCore EDK II (EDK II) is an open-source UEFI firmware development kit maintained by the TianoCore community. It provides a reference implementation of the UEFI specifications and a modular toolchain for building, testing, and deploying firmware. The project supports architectures including x86, x86-64, and ARM and is used by hardware vendors, developers, and researchers to create firmware, drivers, and UEFI applications.

Origin and licensing: EDK II originated from Intel's Tiano project and is developed under the TianoCore umbrella. The codebase is released under permissive BSD-style licenses, enabling broad reuse and contribution. Governance is community-driven, with development coordinated on version control repositories and mailing lists.

Architecture and contents: EDK II has a modular structure with packages such as MdePkg (base firmware interfaces), PlatformPkg, and MdeModulePkg for UEFI drivers and applications, plus a core set of libraries and tooling like BaseTools. The build system uses DSC, DEC, and INF manifests to assemble firmware volumes and produce binaries and capsules.

Build and usage: The sources are available from the TianoCore repositories, notably the edk2 project on GitHub. Developers set up the environment and build for a target architecture; EDK II supports emulation with QEMU as well as deployment to real hardware and common workflows such as driver development, UEFI shell work, and firmware updates via capsules. The project is hosted on GitHub at tianocore/edk2.

Impact: As a widely adopted open-source firmware foundation, EDK II underpins many reference and vendor firmware implementations. It provides a baseline for UEFI drivers, services, and applications and plays a key role in secure boot workflows and firmware testing.