STM32 development and debugging using VSCode

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

Starting a project with STM32CubeMX

When starting STM32CubeMX we can select "Access to MCU Selector":

Miscellaneous Links

• Simple Blink Project with VSCode Config