This repository contains files, needed in lab sessions in order to make ARM development on STM32F4xx discovery board a bit nicer.

Obviously, one needs to have proper toolchain installed. On most distributions, this toolchain can be obtained by installing couple of arm-none-eabi-* packages from distribution repository. Note that packages on fedora 21 are broken, so this will not work for stable fedora at the moment.

Other option is to create cross compiler manually, in which case we only need cross compiled binutils, stage1 cross compiled gcc and cross compiled newlib. For debugging, we can use multi target gdb. This setup was tested on Gentoo system and works like a charm.

Third option is to use precompiled arm toolchain that can be obtained from it's official site. This package contains all the binaries for our development. There is just one small snag: in order to be able to use gdb, 32-bit ncurses library should be installed on host machine.

Additionally, STM development libraries should also be installed somewhere on the system (it really doesn't matter where, since location is configurable).

Last thing needed is stlink package (more specifically, st-flash and st-util executables should be present on the system). Again, it really doesn't matter where, since this is configurable.

This harnes needs almost no preparation, since most of the stuff is written in generic way that works for any project. Only configuration that should be done resides in common/Makefile file under CONFIGURATION section. Variables that should be set are:

• STM_COMMON that should point to toplevel of STM library
• CC that should contain path to cross compiler for arm
• AS that should contain path to cross assembler for arm
• OBJCOPY should point to cross compiled objcopy program
• GDB should point to cross compiled or multitarget debugger
• STFLASH should point to st-flash binary
• STUTIL should point to st-util binary

All other sections of that makefile should be left as they are, since they should work with no editing.

Creating new project is as easy as adding new folder in which to place sources and project makefile. Makefile should contain only two things: NAME variable definition, which controls the name of the final elf file (for example, if we place NAME := test in Makefile, end result will be test.elf binary) and include statement for common Makefile. For quick sample, have a look at v01 folder.

Compiling project is as easy as calling make in project folder. There is nothing more to it.

Again, flashing board is dead easy. Just call make burn and your program will be transferred to development board. Make sure your board is connected to computer before executing this step.

Again, debugging is easy. Connect your board and call make gdb. This command will make sure your binary is up-to-date, start remote gdb server, connect to it, upload fresh image to board and halt the execution of your program. Now you can debug your program just like any other C program.