Posted on May 25, 2012 at 17:13FordP-
You had more fortitude than I did. I tried doing the exact same thing (porting the ST VCOM code to an MCBSTM32 board) and I eventually gave up. I am using Keil uVision 4. It was WAY too difficult. I wanted to use the MCBSTM32 because I wanted my end application product to use the 64 pin part instead of the 144 pin part. And any comments about where things needed to be modified were entirely missing as far as I can tell. Very cryptic. I did get the ST VCOM stuff to work with a loaner STM3210E-EVAL, but as you point out, the board type is DEEPLY embedded into the code. Unless you have a total grasp of all the different board options, chip options, pin options, clock options, and the contents of the numerous different C and H files and their functions, this porting task is monumental.
I found the same issues to be true with the various USB HID code examples by the way. I fairly quickly got Keil's HID example for the MCBSTM32 board to work with their Windows host code. But unless you are both a USB expert and an STM32 expert, all their code is also hard to follow and minimally commented as well. By trial and error and endless searching through the Keil user forum, I managed to figure out where to put all the changes that were needed to get that HID application to transmit and receive more than one byte at a time. The code is way too cryptic, what are they trying to hide? Example code should be commented better than this so that a person not intimate with the details can quickly see the forest from the trees. And places that could be modified should be boldly commented in an obvious way.
I don't know why the creators of the various STM32 examples are so sparse with their comments. And there is basically nothing to explain the top level why and how everything fits together in the examples. I think ST (and Keil) should take a look at the example code that Microchip creates. Easy to follow, well commented, and easy to modify for your end application. I've briefly looked at the TI Stellaris examples and they also seem to be well documented. Example code should be there for teaching purposes. And it should make my job easier, not harder. ST, are you listening? I know you are a chip company, but if you are selling microcontrollers, you are also a software company.
