extensive patches to enable the program to compile under Linux using the
GNU-EFI package (http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnu-efi/). Although
GNU-EFI is less sophisticated than recent versions of TianoCore's toolkit,
-GNU-EFI is my preferred environment because I prefer working in Linux and
-because TianoCore's toolkit relies on obsolete versions of Microsoft's
-Visual C++, and I had trouble tracking that down. For this reason, I used
-Debian's patched version of rEFIt as a starting point in forking rEFInd.
-The main down side to doing this is that a few rEFIt features got lost.
-Most notable among these is the ability to load filesystem drivers. I've
-also dropped ancillary programs, such as the ext2fs driver module and
+GNU-EFI is my preferred environment because versions of TianoCore that can
+build under Linux use a very different set of include files and support a
+somewhat different set of system calls than are used by rEFIt/rEFInd. Thus,
+converting to a new TianoCore toolkit would entail a lot of work. Using an
+older version would require building under Windows and using old versions
+of Microsoft's Visual C. I neither have this toolchain nor do I want to use
+it. For this reason, I used Debian's patched version of rEFIt as a starting
+point in forking rEFInd.
+
+I've dropped ancillary programs, such as the ext2fs driver module and
gptsync program, from rEFInd. You can still use these tools with rEFInd,
-but you'll need to install them separately; and in the case of filesystem
-drivers, you'll need to configure your EFI to load them before you launch
-rEFInd.
+but you'll need to install them separately.
+
+The patched version of rEFIt that I used as a starting point disabled the
+program's ability to load EFI drivers because of limitations in the GNU-EFI
+library. A combination of improvements in recent versions of the library
+and implementing a (now apparently abandoned) EFI function directly in
+rEFInd has enabled me to add this support back to rEFInd 0.2.7 and later.
Requirements
* A standard set of Linux development tools, based on GCC.
* The GNU-EFI package (http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnu-efi/). You
- can usually install this from a package called "gnu-efi".
+ can install this from a package called "gnu-efi"; however, rEFInd relies
+ on features that were added somewhere between GNU-EFI 3.0i and 3.0p to
+ provide driver-loading capabilities. As of 4/2012, most Linux
+ distributions seem to deliver rather elderly versions of GNU-EFI, so you
+ may need to download the latest source code, compile it, and install it
+ locally. Since rEFInd version 0.2.7, the Makefiles assume this (see
+ below).
It's possible that you could use a non-Linux platform to compile rEFInd. To
the best of my knowledge, the rEFInd code doesn't rely on anything
If rEFInd doesn't compile correctly, you'll need to track down the source
of the problem. Double-check that you've got all the necessary development
tools installed, including GCC, make, and GNU-EFI. You may also need to
-adjust the Makefile or Make.common file for your system. For instance, on
-Fedora, you must change the following variables in Make.common as shown:
-
-GNUEFILIB = /usr/lib64
-EFILIB = /usr/lib64
-EFICRT0 = /usr/lib64/gnuefi
+adjust the Makefile or Make.common file for your system. The most likely
+thing you'll need to change is the path to the various GNU-EFI include
+files and libraries. Since rEFInd 0.2.7, the default Make.common file
+includes the following definitions:
+
+EFIINC = /usr/local/include/efi
+GNUEFILIB = /usr/local/lib
+EFILIB = /usr/local/lib
+EFICRT0 = /usr/local/lib
+
+If you've installed GNU-EFI from a distribution's package, you may need to
+remove "local" from those paths, and perhaps change references to "lib" to
+"lib64". As noted earlier, though, as of 4/2012, most distributions provide
+out-of-date GNU-EFI implementations that will not work with rEFInd 0.2.7
+and later.
Installing rEFInd