One of the issues with getting started with any Arm-based project is picking a toolset. Some of us here just use the command line with our favorite editor, but we know that doesn’t suit many people–they want a modern IDE. But which one to choose? User [Wassim] faced this problem, evaluated six different options for STM32 and was kind enough to document his findings over on Hackaday.io.
Many of the tools are Windows-only and at least two of them are not totally free, but it is still a good list with some great observations. Of course, the choice of an IDE is a highly personal thing, but just having a good list is a great start.
[Wassim’s] interest in STM32 was spurred by the Blue Pill board–the $2 STM32 board and his desire to debug it. He found you often have to make tweaks to the IDEs to get them to work. In fact, his final choice did require quite a bit of work, which he shares.
One thing he didn’t mention that we’ve noticed: Most of the IDEs rely on an ST-provided code generator called CubeMX to start projects. That’s handy because it lets you select I/O devices and builds a lot of the setup code for clocks, interrupts, I/O setup, etc. However, there’s at least one bug in the generator that crops up if you try to use the PLL as the main clock. The fix is simple, but you have to apply it every time you regenerate the code. Speaking of clocks, if you are using the STM32 parts at this level, you’ll appreciate this discussion of clock options and caveats.
We love to see Hackaday readers share their research with the rest of us, and if you are browsing Hackaday.io, you are missing out on at least half of the Hackaday experience. Meanwhile, I’m still an Emacs holdout (see video, below). It even handles debugging, too.
Filed under: ARM, Software Development
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