Bare-Metal ARM Programming on Windows: Cross-Compilation Questions
Arm 64 Windows and Native
GNU Arm Embedded Toolchain Version 10-2020-q4-major
c++ - How to install gcc-arm-none-eabi for MinGW users? - Stack Overflow
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Hello everyone!
I'm relatively new to the world of embedded and bare-metal programming, and I have a few questions regarding the subject. A few months ago, I purchased an Arduino Giga, which uses an ARM-based STM32 processor, to dive into the embedded space and practice working with electronics. Since then, I've been using the Arduino IDE to write simple programs involving sensors.
However, the idea of learning C to program the STM32 MCU without the abstractions provided by Arduino really caught my interest. Currently, I'm working on a x64 Windows PC and using VS Code as my IDE. So far, I’ve learned that I need to cross-compile for a bare-metal ARM architecture, however, I can't seem to find many resources on how to do so given my circumstances. I’m curious about how most people approach this process.
You can use MinGW for this; you just need to swap out the C++ toolchain for your chosen one. You can still invoke it from the MSYS console, and all your other tools will still work. There's nothing inherent to MinGW or MSYS that makes this "not supported".
Personally I install GCC 4.9 gcc-arm-none-eabi from launchpad.net, mount the toolchain's directory in MSYS then export the paths I need:
mount 'C:\PROGRA~2\GNUTOO~1\4947E~1.920' /foo
mount 'C:\PROGRA~2\GNUTOO~1\4947E~1.920\ARM-NO~1' /foo_local
To discover the short name for the paths, write dir /X at the Windows command prompt. On my machine, the paths above are equivalent to the following, respectively:
C:\Program Files (x86)\GNU Tools ARM Embedded\4.9 2014q4C:\Program Files (x86)\GNU Tools ARM Embedded\4.9 2014q4\arm-none-eabi
The mounting only needs to be done once; the export directives may be added to /etc/profile:
export CPPFLAGS="-I/foo_local/include"
export CFLAGS="-I/foo_local/include"
export CXXFLAGS="-I/foo_local/include"
export LDFLAGS="-L/foo_local/lib -mthreads"
export PATH=".:/foo_local/bin:/foo/bin:/bin:/opt/bin"
Then just run g++.
Or of course you can skip all the export business and just invoke your chosen GCC directly:
/foo/bin/g++
If you're using MSYS2, MinGW compliance, you'll be able to install arm-none-eabi-gcc through pacman
You can download it from here: https://www.msys2.org
Follow the instructions to properly setup the environments.
Then use this commands below
pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-arm-none-eabi-gcc mingw-w64-x86_64-libwinpthread-git
now you'll also need to add this into PATH,
echo "export PATH=$PATH:/mingw64/bin" >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc
Then, you can now call arm-none-eabi-gcc with the MSYS2 shell.
See here for the details of this package https://packages.msys2.org/group/mingw-w64-x86_64-arm-none-eabi-toolchain