FreeRTOS Test Bench

Modified: 2023-02

This repository serves as an open source test bench for developing applications using the FreeRTOS-Kernel on the STM32F411VET6U MCU as part of the STM32F411E-DISCO Evaluation Board. Many of the integrations in this repository can be ported to different MCUs.

Navigation

1. Features
2. Software Requirements
3. Quickstart
4. VSCode Configuration
5. License

Features

VSCode Integration

• XRTOS Task View
• MCU Memory View
• Hardware Peripheral Map
• GDB Debugging Utilities
• Intellisense configured with compile commands generated by CMake project

Custom CMake specification

• FreeRTOS-Kernel and STM32F4 source fetched as part of project build.
• Automatic toolchain discovery and configuration.

Software Requirements

This toolchain leverages the following software tools:

• CMake (Build system)
• ARM GCC (Code generation toolchain)
• OpenOCD (Open source on-chip debugger)

See the installation guide for installation instructions.

Quickstart

Clone this project:

git clone git@github.com:dronectl/freertos-testbench.git
cd freertos-testbench

Build the project. For debug symbols and FreeRTOS task statistics build for debug mode:

If no build type is specified the project will default to a release build.

mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=DEBUG
...

Compile the project

make -j`nproc`

Flash the board:

OpenOCD automatically detects an STLINK device over USB.

make flash

VSCode Configuration

In order to setup VSCode for this project, it is recommended you install the following extensions:

1. ms-vscode.cpptools
2. marus25.cortex-debug
3. twxs.cmake

Copy the dev/.vscode directory to the repository root. The files included provide the following capability:

1. c_cpp_properties.json -> configuration for intellisense and static analysis tools.
2. launch.json -> configuration for vscode debugging interface.

Intellisense

Because the c_cpp_properties.json requires the compile commands file generated by cmake to operate, you will need to build the project (see Quickstart). Intellisense will look for a compile_commands.json file in the build directory.

If you make a change to the source files simply rebuild the project. The compile commands will be updated by CMake and VSCode will detect and apply these changes automatically.

Debugger Launch

Note you must build the project with -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=DEBUG to enable debug symbols.

Once the project binary is built using make, we can launch the vscode debugger using the F5 key. Here is a sample view of the debugging utilities:

Below is a list of capabilities provided by the cortex-debug extension:

• Cortex peripheral register read and set
• Variable inspection and watchpoints
• Live breakpoints
• Task seperated call stacks
• Task runtime statistics
• MCU memory inspection

License

This project is licensed for use under the terms of the LGPL-3.0 license.