Keil is very easy to handle for embedded development but might not have some functionalities such as code completion and inlay hint. This would trouble you especially when you want to conduct a big project.

IDEs by Jetbrains like Intellij and Pycharm are very popular in the market. They have many advantages including charming UIs, good usability, safe refactoring. Doubtlessly, their IDEs could greatly assist your coding works. CLion is a cross-platform IDE for C/C++ development by Jetbrains, and I will guide you to setup a basic development environment for STM32 with CLion in this tutorial.

Tools

Software

  • A computer with macOS(for sure)
  • CLion
  • STM32CubeMX
  • Homebrew

Hardware

  • STM32 MCU
  • ST-Link/J-Link

Installations

Prerequisites

CLion

The version should be higher than 2019.2.

STM32CubeMX

Downloading requires email verification.

  • After you unzip the downloaded file, right-click the STM32CubeMX package and click Show Package Contents and right click to open the executable file inside the package.

  • There will be an error window popped up. Click Cancel.

  • Open Security & Privacy in System Preferences and click Allow Anyway.

  • Open STM32CubeMX executable file again in the package and click Open.

  • Install STM32CubeMX.

Homebrew

Validate the installation brew -v.

You should have installed these tools above before you continue the next step.

ARM Toolchain

  • Run brew tap ArmMbed/homebrew-formulae and brew install arm-none-eabi-gcc in the terminal.

Validate the installation: arm-none-eabi-gcc -v.

OpenOCD

brew install open-ocd

Validate the installation: openocd -v.

CLion Configurations

OpenOCD & STM32CubeMX Paths

  • Generally, both of your OpenOCD and CubeMX locations should be as same as me. Remember to test your paths by clicking Test.

Toolchains

  • Set build tools, C/C++ compilers and debuggers. You should use Bundled GDB or like me, manually set another GDB path for Debugger option.

  • Create a new STM32CubeMX project.

  • Here, you can either click Use to choose a board type or click Skip to choose one later.

  • Click Open with STM32CubeMX to open the application.

  • The default MCU is STM32F030F4Px.

  • You can use STM32CubeMX like what you do everyday.

  • You have to select STM32CubeIDe in Toolchain / IDE setting, and the Project Name should be kept as same as the project name in CLion.

  • After you generate code and overwrite the old project files, click Assist and choose a board type in Run/Debug Configurations.
  • You also need to edit the board config file in accordance to the version of your ST-Link.

Congrats! You can now build, upload, and debug in CLion.

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