What is the STM32?

Installing the Toolchain Prerequisites

Update all your sources and upgrade your system

Open a terminal window and type:

Or in one convenient command that doesn't require any interaction:

Install Autoreconf & LibUSB

Open a terminal window and type:

Install Git

Git is a popular version control system that is very popular, notably due to GitHub. You will need the tool to download the latest version of STLink directly from its repository

Again in the command line:

Installing the Toolchain

Install the compiler

Start by adding the PPA to your system:

You then want to update your sources: sudo apt-get update and install the package: sudo apt-get install gcc-arm-none-eabi

If it installs correctly, doing autocomplete in the terminal like so:

should yield a list similar to:

arm-none-eabi-addr2line   arm-none-eabi-gcc-4.7.4   arm-none-eabi-ld.bfd
arm-none-eabi-ar          arm-none-eabi-gcc-ar      arm-none-eabi-nm
arm-none-eabi-as          arm-none-eabi-gcc-nm      arm-none-eabi-objcopy
arm-none-eabi-c++         arm-none-eabi-gcc-ranlib  arm-none-eabi-objdump
arm-none-eabi-c++filt     arm-none-eabi-gcov        arm-none-eabi-ranlib
arm-none-eabi-cpp         arm-none-eabi-gdb         arm-none-eabi-readelf
arm-none-eabi-elfedit     arm-none-eabi-gdbtui      arm-none-eabi-size
arm-none-eabi-g++         arm-none-eabi-gprof       arm-none-eabi-strings
arm-none-eabi-gcc         arm-none-eabi-ld          arm-none-eabi-strip
                

Install STLink

The STLink package is the software for the STLink programmer that works with many boards ST boards. On the discovery boards, the programmer is embedded at the top. YOu just need to make sure you plug in your mini-USB cable into the center-most port that is labeled ST-Link.

Start by cloning the git repository to a local folder:

Go into the directory: cd stlink and run the following commands (from the repository instructions):

./autogen.sh

./configure

make

You should now have compiled a series of STLink tools. Verify this by listing the contents of the directory that start with st-

Let's install these to our computer, so that we don't have to keep coming back to this temporary folder where we've built the software

Now you should be able to access these programs from anywhere in the terminal. Verify this by moving to a different directory:

Flashing your first program

Blink example

Download Neil's blink example and unzip it somewhere. Open a terminal and navigate to that folder. Following which, you will compile the blink example: make

Once, you have compiled the blink example, you should get a blink.elf file that you will want to flash to your board:

sudo make flash

Using the debugging tool (GDB)

The interface works in two halves: the st-util and the GDB utility. The former hooks into the device and provides an interface for the interactive debugger shell embodied in the latter tool.

Let's start by loading the ST Utility:

It should have spit out some information and say that it's listening on *:4242

In a new terminal window, you now want to start the debug tool GDB:

It should drop you to the GDB command line, that starts each input line with: (gdb).

Connect your GDB tool to the ST utility:

You should see on the ST utility console that the GDB tool connected. And now we want to load your program:

You will notice that on your board, the LEDs will be stopped and the program will have stopped executing, often midway through it. This is because the debugger has kicked in and we want to tell it to continue with the execution. In the GDB console type:

If you want to drop back to the GDB shell to set debug points in your code or do other debug functions, just press CTRL+C (^C), the UNIX universal interrupt command.

Congratulations! You have now setup your system to load and debug code for the STM32 board! Please feel free to add to this tutorial in future. In particular if you have figured out installation of the toolchain on Mac OS.