Tools

SBL provides the development tools to support building, stitching and configuring the output images.

Build Command

BuildLoader.py compiles source code with all the magics to generate output image(s) with slim footprint. It provides two subcommands: build and clean.

You can build SBL with the following options:

  • Build for a supported target
  • Debug or release build
  • Use debug image of FSP
  • Change your payload files
  • Attach a version data structure of your own

Command Syntax:

python BuildLoader.py <subcommand> <target> <options>

<subcommand>  : build or clean
<target>      : board name (e.g. apl or qemu)

Windows and Linux share the same command line options as follows. For example, for build subcommand:

usage: BuildLoader.py build [-h] [-r] [-v] [-fp FSPPATH] [-fd] [-p PAYLOAD] board

positional arguments:
board                 Board Name (apl, qemu)

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -r, --release         Release build
  -v, --usever          Use board version file
  -fp FSPPATH           FSP binary path relative to FspBin in Silicon folder
  -fd, --fspdebug       Use debug FSP binary
  -p PAYLOAD, --payload PAYLOAD
                        Payload file name

SBL supports a single image supporting up to 32 board configurations for the same type of board or platform. To add multi-board support, see Configuration.

IAS Tool

iasimage is a utility for creating Intel Automotive Service (IAS) images in a binary file format understood by SBL to load and initialize Operating Systems or Hypervisors.

This tool is available on GitHub: https://github.com/intel/iasimage

Stitch Tool

StitchLoader.py is a utility to replace SBL image in a fully flashable IFWI image. It takes all system firmware components from a working IFWI image and replace the BIOS region with SBL components.

This tool is used to create two output files:

  • IFWI image with SBL (-o option).
  • SBL BIOS image for capsule update (-b option). See Update Firmware.

The command line options to perform stitching:

usage: StitchLoader.py [-h] -i IFWI_IN [-o IFWI_OUT] [-b BIOS_OUT]
                       [-s STITCH_IN] [-p PLAT_DATA]

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -i IFWI_IN, --input-ifwi-file IFWI_IN
                        Specify input template IFWI image file path
  -o IFWI_OUT, --output-ifwi-file IFWI_OUT
                        Specify generated output IFWI image file path
  -b BIOS_OUT, --output-bios-region BIOS_OUT
                        Specify generated output BIOS region image file path
  -s STITCH_IN, --sitch-zip-file STITCH_IN
                        Specify input sitching zip package file path
  -p PLAT_DATA, --platform-data PLAT_DATA
                        Specify a platform specific data (HEX, DWORD) for
                        customization

PLAT_DATA is a DWORD containing platform data to configure debug UART port number. Format is defined below:

typedef struct {
  UINT8               PlatformId : 5;    /* Platform ID      */
  UINT8               Reserved1  : 3;
  UINT8               DebugUart  : 2;    /* UART port index */
  UINT8               Reserved2  : 6;
  UINT8               Reserved3;
  UINT8               Marker;            /* 'AA'            */
} STITCH_DATA;

IFWI Image vs. SBL BIOS Image

IFWI image is used as input to program SPI flash on the hardware, while SBL BIOS image is used as input file to create firmware update capsule image.

Configuration Editor

ConfigEditor.py is a GUI program provided in SBL to allow user to customize board specific settings. You will need this tool in porting or customizing a new board. It provides features to load a platform configuration file (*.dsc) and generate board configuration delta file (*.dlt). This tool can be used in pre-build or post-build process.

This tool depends on Python GUI tool kit Tkinter. It runs on both Windows and Linux.

Running Configuration Editor:

python BootloaderCorePkg/Tools/ConfigEditor.py