List of problems found by a newly CubeIDE user

[Clark Sann]

I am a new CubeIDE user working on a new MacBook Pro. Transitioning from TI, where their IDE pretty much works, has been troublesome. I've encountered a number of problems I want to tell you about. I've found work arounds for some of them and just try to avoid the rest but I thought you should see what I have found.

Working with another developer, we have found that some of these problems are peculiar to MacOS, others appear to be on all OSes. Most of the problems I address pertain to trying to get familiar with the STM32F103RB-Nucleo board so most are all related to the F1 MCU repository using the latest version of that repo and the latest version of CubeIDE.

Here are some bugs I have found in the last few days:

1. Importing example projects from the F1 MCU repository does not work very well. There are a number of options to use when you try to do an import. Most do not work. The only ones that works for me is "Import an ac6 System Workbench..." and "Projects from Folder or Archive" and those don't work very well. The GUI needs to be rewritten in some way so a new user doesn't spend hours trying various permutations and combinations of activities using an import mode that simply is broken. There are too many choices, most of which do not work in my use case. Maybe it would be as simple as some instructions in the help menu explaining when to use the various import options.
2. Importing examples using either of the two methods that do work cause the project name to be changed. Every example causes the name to be changed to the same name. And you cannot have two projects with the same name in a workspace. So that means you must create a new workspace for each example you import. That is awful.
3. Project renaming does not appear to work properly on MacOS. When you try to rename an example project you imported, the repository is mangled and the project does not build. So now you have to either mess around with deleting hidden files in the repo or just delete the MCU software pack and reinstall it....which is what I did dozens of times.
4. When you download a software pack, the progress dialog is hidden behind the Embedded Software Packages Manager window. Until I figured this out, it was difficult to figure out why the GUI had appeared to hang. ARGGGG!
5. I got frustrated with the F1 problems so I happened to have a 411E-DISCO board and decided to try to learn using it. This next problem happened using that board. I haven't done enough development with the 103RB-Nucleo to know if it happens there also. I do not know the cause of this, but often CubeIDE decides to duplicate the HAL drivers. When this happens there will be hundreds of duplicated functions and the system will not build. When I use the Project Explorer and look at the HAL Driver Src folder I see things like this....stm32f4xxhal_gpio.c and also another copy of it with a name something like stm32f4xxhal_gpio.c2. Deleting all the files with the .c2 or .2c...whatever it was fixes the problem, but why are they appearing? This seems to be a bug. It happened to me 8 or 9 times yesterday and I do not know why it happened or if I was at fault. Even if I triggered it, I can't think of any reason the the IDE should duplicate driver files.
6. Sometime the debugger is stopping on lines that I have not set as breakpoints. I wish I could offer more specifics but it happened a lot to me yesterday. When I see it happen again, I will try to document this better.

To end on a positive note, I see lots of things to like about CubeIDE when compared with the TI IDE. The Target Selector is really nice, as is the graphical MCU configurator. I do wish the Target Selector worked with more MCU families but I suppose that will be improved as time allows.