Why doesn't ST provide DiscoveryKit projects for Free IDE's such as Eclipse?

[davidharrison9]

Posted on December 30, 2014 at 00:15

You know, it is SOOO annoying that ST insists on providing Discovery Kit projects only for expensive commercial IDE tools such as Attolic, Keil etc. These commercial IDE/compilers for ARM are just way too expensive for hobbyists. What about ST providing pre-built projects for Eclipse/GNU ARM GCC for all their demo projects for all their discovery kits?

For those interested, I have built a working Eclipse/GNU ARM project for the STM32F3DiscoveryKit Demonstration program. Contact me to get it at

mailto:david.harrison@modelsoundsinc.com

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[jpeacock]

Posted on December 30, 2014 at 18:13

ST builds ICs for the commercial market, not hobbyists.  A Gnu/Eclipse version would be nice but there's no commercial support structure for it, unlike Keil or IAR.  Getting GCC/Eclipse/OpenODT working the first time without help is a lengthy experience, one that many businesses would rather not pay for.  It's faster to go with a commercial product with a support phone line.  And cheaper too, engineering time is very expensive.

Sure the Eclipse/GCC tools work, I use it myself, but that initial learning curve was steep.  ST can't afford the support costs for hobbyists, no vendor can, and they shouldn't have to, they aren't in the developer software business.  So they offer packages with the market leaders and leave it to the individual to pick the best path. You are learning one of the secrets of software development...free software isn't free.  You pay for it in the time it takes you to convert example code from some other platform and the learning curve to use the essentially unsupported tools.   Jack Peacock