Some more on this. (I’m not sure this is a solution – but it at least solves the problem of not finding these 2nd level library files…) The tutorial notes that, in the STM32CubeMX software, in the Code Generator tab of the Project Settings, you should click the ‘Add necessary library files as reference in the toolchain project configuration file’ radio button. But that was leading to the error described above. If I, instead, click on the ‘Copy on the necessary library files’ radio button, the Middleware library also gets exported to my project directory and I am able to find these ff.h libraries, etc. (by adding the proper path to these folders in the project properties makefile settings)
My new problem is that now when I build my project I’m getting a new error of multiple definitions of HAL_xxx library files. I feel like this is an independent problem from what I described here so I have started new post on this which is located at https://sysprogs.com/w/forums/topic/multiple-definition-hal_-files/
Thus, this post should probably be marked as ‘Solved’ … I guess.