Ongoing and practical engineering support is planned.

sdsag***: Atollic TrueSTUDIO, a free development environment for STM32, is very welcome.
yspark2***: It's great news that the license is provided for free.
core***: I wonder if RTOS-related analysis tools are also supported^^

The culmination of all electronic device programming is the compilation of the program onto the IC. These days, IC manufacturers offer a variety of development boards. After completing the main IC pin layout stage on these evaluation boards, the developer's PC and development board are connected via USB, serial, or JTAG. The program coded on the developer's PC is then ported (uploaded) to the IC, and the compilation process begins.

If a program does not run the way the developer wants it to when it is run, it is a compilation error. Even if it runs the way the developer wants it to, if the compilation tool shows an error, the result is still an error.

In the past, developers used Eclipse, a free, open-source tool for compilation tools. However, as always, free tools require a lot of learning and configuration errors on the part of the user. Furthermore, without understanding the execution error codes, developers often end up in what's known as "endless digging." Any developer will fully empathize.

STMicroelectronics' (ST) STM32 microcontrollers have been undergoing new experiments for the past three or four years. They have been intensifying their efforts in various projects aimed at providing greater convenience to engineers.

A representative example is the free distribution of CubeMX, a hardware tool that allows developers using the company's products to easily and conveniently visualize the target IC pin layout.
In the past, hardware pin layouts were done by referring to a data sheet, assigning each pin individually in an Excel spreadsheet, and then directly inserting this into the code through the IDE interface. This manual setting method required manual pin assignments ranging from as few as 28 pins to over 200 pins, which not only caused design inconveniences, but also often led to designs being conducted without a proper understanding of the characteristics of each pin. Furthermore, when changing the chip used in a device to a different chip, compatibility could only be checked on the data sheet, which made development difficult due to various incompatibilities that occurred when the change was actually made, according to Lee Jun-ho, Manager of the MCD Team at ST Korea.

CubeMX is an initialization code generation tool designed to address these inconveniences. Incorrect pin placement prevents the pins from being placed correctly, allowing you to create a perfect pin map before exporting to the IDE. In addition, most of the IC information provided by ST is built-in, so when you call the IC model name at runtime, you can see the shape and information of the related IC, which can significantly reduce the error rate, and since data sheet information is also provided on the interface, you can easily check the pin characteristics.

STM32's developer-centric ecosystem blossoms with TrueSTUDIO.

All programming development culminates in compiling the program, downloading it to the IC, and debugging (modifying it). As mentioned earlier, Eclipse, which is available for free, requires a certain amount of user experience and experience with errors to become familiar with its many settings. To reduce these configuration errors and inconveniences in use, various free and paid compilation tools have been released under the name of IDE.

Representative examples include IAR Embedded workbench, KEIL MDK-ARM, Raisonance RIDE7 RKIT ARM enterprise, CosmicIDE ARM, mikro C ARM, and TrueSTUDIO from Atollic, which was recently acquired by ST.
What benefits do developers get from using TrueSTUDIO for STM32?
Through the acquisition of Atollic last December, ST has combined the initialization code generation tool CubeMX and the build & debugging tool Atollic TrueSTUDIO into a family, creating a complete integrated development ecosystem from the start of development to the debugging stage.

This is a move that allows us to guess how much effort ST is putting into improving developer-centered convenience. This development ecosystem provides convenience to existing developers and lowers the barrier to entry for developers new to development.

Manager Lee Jun-ho, who frequently meets and communicates directly with various developers, said, “From a developer’s perspective, TrueSTUDIO for STM32 (Atollic® TrueSTUDIO® for STM32) will confirm ST’s commitment to prioritizing developer convenience from a technical perspective.” He also said, “Now, based on CubeMX, which is included in the STM32 ecosystem, and TrueSTUDIO for STM32, it will be possible to reduce the cost of building a practical development environment and dramatically shorten the development time for TIME TO MARKET.”

In addition, “technical support is guaranteed through ST Korea branch and dealers, so development issues can be resolved more easily and conveniently. “Various channels are provided to resolve issues, including the continued operation of the Atollic-dedicated technical forum operated within the existing Atollic site and the STM32 community (https://community.st.com/community/stm32-community) within the ST homepage (www.st.com),” he said.
What about existing KEIL and IAR users?
In response to our question about whether the acquisition of Atollic is expected to attract existing KEIL or IAR user base, Kyung-Hwa Choi, Manager of ST Korea, said, “The most important thing is to provide the optimal development environment for STM32 developers,” and “We plan to continue to provide support and joint promotions with IDEs such as KEIL and IAR as before.”


"There has been a persistent demand for free compilation in the existing market. With this STM32-specific TrueSTUDIO, we can now provide developers with even more options," he explained. “Also, if new projects emerge in the future, KEIL and IAR will be provided in the same way, so the existing collaborative relationship will remain the same,” he added.

Manager Lee Jun-ho added, “If you want to change to TrueSTUDIO, you can transfer projects using the converter provided by TrueSTUDIO for IAR, and for other languages such as KEIL, there is a roundabout way to transfer projects using CubeMX.”

What's new in version 9.0?
With the 9.0 version upgrade (TrueSTUDIO for STM32 (Atollic® TrueSTUDIO® for STM32)), the existing paid version has been changed to a free license, and users of the free version can also use the Pro version, which includes many of the existing advanced debugging tools. Additionally, this upgrade includes the IDE's core functions of real-time tracing, CPU Fault Analyze, and RTOS-aware debugging features that enable debugging tools to recognize the kernel in RTOS-using applications and analyze various tasks that operate based on the kernel.
The strengths of TrueSTUDIO for STM32
TrueSTUDIO is an IDE built on the open source Eclipse platform. Manager Lee Jun-ho introduced TrueSTUDIO, which is dedicated to STM32, as “the biggest strength is that it is an open-source IDE that supports various languages as well as embedded software, and that various plug-ins can be used according to the user’s needs.”
Because it is possible to use various languages such as C, C++, Python, and Java, various open source plug-ins are being created, and above all, advanced debugging and analysis tools developed by Atollic can be used for free.

What does this technical webinar on TrueSTUDIO for STM32 mean?
ST will host a webinar on TrueSTUDIO for STM32 (Title: Atollic TrueSTUDIO 9.0, a free development environment for STM32) on April 26 at e4ds.com.
The webinar will present a demonstration of the basic structure of the Eclipse platform, which is the basis of Atollic TrueSTUDIO, the project build-up and debugging tools provided by Atollic TrueSTUDIO for STM32, and the real-time analysis tools.

The demo content is based on the updated version 9.0 of Atollic 8.0, and uses an actual STM32 product to do pin placement through CubeMX, and proceeds with porting and compiling to the IC using the TrueSTUDIO toolchain.

Manager Lee Jun-ho explained, “This opportunity to participate in a follow-up manner will be a great opportunity for even first-time developers to experience everything from product setup to compilation.” He also said, “I hope that developers who have had limited access to TrueSTUDIO so far can experience the same performance and features as the existing paid version,” and “I hope that this will be of great help to developers in developing products.”