Electronics > Microcontrollers

Is ST Cube IDE a piece of buggy crap?

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peter-h:
I've just spent some hours trying to find out why code which compiled last night doesn't compile today.

Nothing was touched - also not touched according to file date stamps (as seen in windows explorer).

But I appreciate that if you leave any editor on-screen with a file open, a slip of the finger on a keyboard can "do stuff". But this should not change a file if you don't then save it.

The error was an obscure one, which I could not get my head round (not my code), to do with a typedef being "external" in a .h file (no idea why not include the .h file containing the real one, or why the typedef was not being exported from the .h in which it was). I don't really understand the intricacies of this stuff so I avoid this sort of thing in my own code. But it compiled the day before! This suggests that files can be changed and don't get recompiled after the change. Well, many times doing a Clean Project and then Build Project does mysteriously fix stuff.

Exiting Cube asked if I want to save a couple of files, suggesting they were edited, and I unchecked both and exited the program. I also found that some of the open files could not be closed by clicking on the cross (obviously this is a bug).

Also I lost the default window configuration. Took me a while to work out how to get it back.

I have backups almost daily of the whole project directory, to a network drive, but need to make sure I really do them daily :)

ataradov:
I'll tell you a secret - any manufacturer provided tools and frameworks are crap. They are a cost center, they don't directly generate money, they cost money. So they are maintained to the level that is mostly acceptable, but no more. There is no real incentive to make them excellent, it will not result in more sales.

SiliconWizard:

--- Quote from: ataradov on July 28, 2021, 09:16:23 pm ---I'll tell you a secret - any manufacturer provided tools and frameworks are crap. They are a cost center, they don't directly generate money, they cost money. So they are maintained to the level that is mostly acceptable, but no more. There is no real incentive to make them excellent, it will not result in more sales.

--- End quote ---

Yes, that is true. Especially since, as you can read here and elsewhere, many professionals actually use other tools than the vendor provided ones. Vendors know this, and know that customers buying the most parts usually don't care about the crap IDEs and code generators they provide.

So, for the OP, do as you wish of course, but if I were you, I would take this mishap as an opportunity to switch to better tools and say goodbye to ST Cube forever. It will take you some time and effort, but will be worth it. ;D

thm_w:
CubeIDE came from a commercial product, Atollic TrueSTUDIO. So its not really the same as in house developed IDEs.
But you are free to use many other IDEs available for STM32.

Are you using version control? Then you will actually know what might have changed instead of guessing.

peter-h:
What would you recommend?

Incidentally I see Cube (currently 1.6.1) is now at 1.7 but I don't want any ST libs getting changed. Is there a way to just update the IDE application? It may update the code generation stuff but that should affect only future usage (and anyway that aspect gets used only to generate snippets which then get moved elsewhere).

I used "make" for many years and it was great, but this thing gives you single stepping. I guess the answer will be that e.g. a Segger debugger comes with software which does that, but from what I have seen of that software, it looked like something from CP/M 2.2 ported to win3.1 :)

Not using version control; however my drift here is that files can get changed in the IDE editor without the IDE being aware of it, and apparently without their time stamps getting changed (yes I know that is hard to believe but I have a video editor - Vegas Pro v16 - which does exactly that!).

Oh and the funniest bit is that during a build a lot of the scrolling text is in white, so you can't see it. Reproduced across 3 machines, some win7-64 and one win10. But if you run it over RDP (remote desktop) you see all the text just fine :) It's actually not trivial to write an app which produces invisible text, using the windows GUI functions, but such that when it is later channeled via RDP it is visible.

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