Could the STM32 be improved?

PlatformIO Core
1

Perhaps it is just me, but I am a bit puzzled with the STM32 support, and I explain why.

When a board is selected (in my case nucleo_f446re) I am supposed to have all the machinery to build my project (Drivers, etc.) in .platformio and a platformio.ini file which contains at least the essential automatically.
Then, my manual work would be to copy/paste the generated files from MX in Core/Src and Core/Inc into the platformio structure Src and Inc, plus copying the .ld files and eventually the Middleware folder and edit a bit my platformio.ini files that today looks like this:

[env:nucleo_f446re]
platform = ststm32
board = nucleo_f446re
framework = stm32cube
board_build.stm32cube.custom_config_header = yes
lib_extra_dirs = Middlewares/Third_Party/FreeRTOS
build_flags =
  -mfpu=fpv4-sp-d16
  -mfloat-abi=softfp
  -IInc
  -IMiddlewares/Third_Party/FreeRTOS/Source/include
  -IMiddlewares/Third_Party/FreeRTOS/Source/CMSIS_RTOS_V2
  -IMiddlewares/Third_Party/FreeRTOS/Source/portable/GCC/ARM_CM4F
; select linker file generated by CubeMX
lib_archive = no
check_tool = cppcheck

Although I understand pretty much all of the above content, shouldn’t the flags -mfpu=fpv4-sp-d16 and -mfloat-abi=softfp be automatically set by platformio?
Because if I don’t, I would have:

Error: selected processor does not support `vstmdbeq r0!,{s16-s31}' in Thumb mode

which is related to the used board and it is known, it is not related to the user preferences (like include paths and so on that I understand must be manually included).
The same applies to the option lib_archive = no…
I feel very uncomfortable that these items have not being automatically added, given that it is clear what board I am using. Sure, I can learn these flags today and live happy. And I can learn even something more tomorrow. But then, where the abstraction provided by platformio will go along this line?

I adjusted my platformio.ini by copying from here here - but I have no idea what is that, if it I will have to change in the future, if I will have to add/remove something else and so on. That makes me to feel very nervous because I am using platformio exactly for the reason of avoiding dealing with such low level details.

Finally, I tried to use stm32pio but I had to manually do lot of work in removing files (Core/Src and Core/Inc, Drivers, etc.) anyway.
Plus, I had to edit the platformio.ini anyway, so why don’t do everything manually at this point? Provided that I am not missing something important of course…

What do you think?

2

Oh definitely it can be improved. In the past I’ve opened simliar issues about not being able to built components that are built into the STM32Cube package, e.g., https://github.com/platformio/platform-ststm32/issues/481, or unintuitive things like https://github.com/platformio/platform-ststm32/issues/591. It’s up to the devs to improve that (and to the users to report it).

3

Oh no! That confirms my fears. If I have a budget of 10h/week I cannot end up in burning all of these hours for “fixing the tool” used rather than “using the tool” for developing the required application.

I’ll switch back to CubeIDE, but I must say it’s a pity because I found myself very happy in using platformio for arduino-like projects.

I’ll try to open “yet another issue” on github to show that we are many who wish to use stm32 :slight_smile: