Working with STM32 is so frustrating

Question

This morning I got an email from ST which included a section on using VS Code to target STM32 CubeMX projects.

This appeals to me since the STM32CubeIDE is seriously lacking in focus from ST. It has looooooong standing bugs which no-one cares about, but which many people have reported and complained about. It gets very little attention from ST, presumably because they're going to kill it off and move everyone to VS Code.

So I watch the video and decided to give CubeMX integration with VS Code a try. Doing so I realise I need to have CubeMX for Mac installed as it needs an "absolute path to executable". So I find the page to download that for macOS only to find the page doesn't load the "get software" section. Doesn't matter whether you log-in or not, that section won't load. I've tried several different browsers too.

Honestly it is ALWAYS like this when dealing with ST Software - full of bugs and frustrations that never get addressed.

unsigned_char_array · Answer

I've set up VS Code for STM32 projects years ago. Setting up compiling and debugging is a lot of work. In addition to correctly building I was eventually able to even get register view and SWO printing working in debug mode. It worked on both Windows 10 and Ubuntu. So it can be done! I manually made the CMake file then and all the code was hand written(no ST HAL libraries). I haven't tried the new Cmake export function by STM32CubeMX yet as we use STM32CubeIDE at my current job and I'm used to most of its quirks.

Honestly despite its flaws ST has better examples and tools than most other vendors I've tried. Many bugs are fixed and addressed eventually. But things like download page not working has no excuse in my opinion (I've encountered that several times).

I recommend the YouTube channel ControllersTech which features many STM32 examples.

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