Creating Embedded Projects on Linux

This tutorial shows how to create a basic STM32 project on Linux using CodeVROOM.

Before you begin, install the following packages:

Also, make sure your system has a functioning xz executable, since CodeVROOM uses it to unpack the device packages.

Once all the prerequisites have been fulfilled, download the latest CodeVROOM archive and unpack it.

1. CodeVROOM for Linux is distributed in .tar.xz files that include all the necessary binaries. To start it, run CodeVROOM-<platform>:
2. CodeVROOM does not need installation, so you can click “Run without installing”, or install it to any location of your choice:
3. The installation only takes a few seconds and simply copies the files to another location and creates shortcuts. Once installed, or ran in-place, the main window will look like this:
4. Select File->New->Project or use the toolbar command to open the project wizard selector. Select the CMake project wizard:
   
5. Proceed with the default choices for the project type:
6. The next page allows selecting a toolchain to use. As of version 0.6, CodeVROOM only supports the embedded ARM toolchain (except the separate ESP32 wizard), and it needs to be pre-installed via a package manager. Once it is selected, CodeVROOM will show a list of devices compatible with the toolchain:Select the device and click “Install” to proceed with the installation.
7. Once the package is installed, CodeVROOM will show the configuration options for the device. Proceed with the default ones:
8. The next page allows choosing between basic project samples and vendor-supplied templates. Select “LEDBlink (FreeRTOS)” sample in the regular list:
9. Finally, let’s configure debugging settings. On Linux/Mac CodeVROOM relies on the system-level openocd installation (sudo apt install openocd), so make sure it is installed. The wizard will automatically pre-select the device script, and will show a searchable drop-down of known debugging interfaces:
10. Select the settings that match your configuration and click “test” to verify them:
11. Once the project got created, let’s modify it, adding the iteration counters to the threads. Add a g_Stats structure with 2 fields, and update threads to increment them within the loops:
12. Build the project (Ctrl-Shift-B or Ctrl-B, depending on the selected keyboard layout):
13. Set a breakpoint before the call to HAL_GPIO_Init() and press F5 (or F11 for Eclipse keyboard layout) to start debugging:Once the breakpoint hits, you can hover the mouse over different expressions to see the values. You can also customize the primary and the secondary value view (e.g. Binary/Hex or combined) via the Debug Expression Settings command.
14. Resume debugging. Try hovering the mouse over g_Stats. CodeVROOM will show the live values of the fields without stopping the program:Note that it only works for global variables that can be evaluated without stopping the target. For complex expressions (e.g. type casts), use the dedicated Live Watch window.
15. Use the Debug->Windows->Globals command to open the Globals view:
16. There you can quickly search for variables containing a particular text. As of v0.6, you need to press Enter to expand the matching nodes, but future versions will support immediate temporary expansion:
17. You can also use the RTOS Objects view to see a live summary of threads, their stack usage, and global status:
18. Set a breakpoint in LED_Thread2 and open the Debug->Windows->Threads window:
19. Search for “Thread”. CodeVROOM will immediately highlight the matching frames:
20. Once all thread stacks got loaded, CodeVROOM will highlight other thread locations in the code. You can click the links with the thread/frame info to switch to that frame:If you used VisualGDB with Visual Studio, you could have noticed that viewing multiple threads/frames slows down stepping. CodeVROOM is designed to completely avoid this bottleneck. Whenever you stop at a breakpoint, it will first show you the location of the stop, and then start loading (and progressively showing) all threads/frames. If you continue execution before all threads got loaded, the background load will get cancelled, and the program will resume immediately.
21. Just like in VisualGDB, you can edit various project properties via the “Properties” command in the Files window:Note that the project, the workspace and the target all have different sets of properties.