Difference between revisions of "STM32 development and debugging using VSCode"

Revision as of 04:05, 31 March 2022

ST provide an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) for STM32 development. As a beginner's environment to learn embedded programming on STM32 MCUs this IDE is not half bad.

Prerequisites

This example is developed on a standard Debian desktop system. On an Ubuntu system it should be almost the same.

Toolchain

The toolchain refers to the compiler and the tools to manipulate binary images. On Debian those are available in the standard repository:

$ sudo apt install gcc-arm-none-eabi binutils-arm-none-eabi

GNU Debugger (GDB)

The GNU Debugger (GDB) is also available:

$ sudo apt install gdb-multiarch

OpenOCD

To communicate with the actual STM32 MCU a JTAG/SWD tool is necessary. Fortunately the standard OpenOCD in Debian support STM32/ST-Link:

$ sudo apt install openocd

STM32CubeMX

STM32CubeMX can be downloaded directly from ST's Website.

Visual Studio Code

The final prerequisite will be VSCode itself. On a Debian system, the easiest way to install VSCode is to use the repository provided by Microsoft. In my case, I've added the repository:

lth@ncpws04:~$ sudo cat /etc/apt/sources.list.d/vscode.list
deb [arch=amd64,arm64,armhf] http://packages.microsoft.com/repos/code stable main

Having that added, installation becomes a simple matter of:

$ sudo apt update && sudo apt install code

After installing VSCode a few extensions need to be installed. Those are:

C/C++ Extension

Cortex-Debug

Makefile Tools

Miscellaneous Links

Simple Blink Project with VSCode Config

@@ Line 54: / Line 54: @@
 ::[[File:C++ Extension.png|400px]]
+* Cortex-Debug
+::[[File:Cortex-Debug Extension.png|400px]]
+* Makefile Tools
+::[[File:Makefile Tools.png|400px]]
 == Miscellaneous Links ==
 * [https://github.com/lbthomsen/stm32/tree/master/bp_blink Simple Blink Project with VSCode Config]