stm32-hal VS probe-run

Typestate-free HALs: This is in exchange for better ergonomics as the author claims. Only two HALs fall in this category right now which are the STM32-HAL & nRF-HAL.

As I worked with the stm32, as implied earlier, the HALs that I worked with were ones built around embedded-hal traits. Nevertheless, I came across a HAL at a certain point that adopted a different approach that felt more practical and easy to understand. This was the stm32-hal stm32-hal that I found to be more wholesome as it incroporated multiple families of the STM32 under a single HAL umbrella (my original expectation). The STM32-hal eliminates much of the trait confusion that I had encountered before. The thing is the stm32-hal does not seem to be mainstream yet. From what I understand, the HALs built with the mebedded-hal as a basis seem to be the ones mainly adopted by the embedded working group. Additionally, I am not sure if the stm32-hal has any equivalent counterparts for other manufacturer devices.

📝 At the time of writing this post, it came to my attention that there is an additional HAL that targets STM32 device families (the stm32-hal). From what I figure, right now there seem to be two approaches for developing HALs. The first approach is trait driven so to speak where the embedded-hal is used as a foundation. The second approach is more application-driven and provides a high-level API that targets several families of a device. However, this exists only for the stm32 through the stm32-hal. Right now, the first approach is what I found to be more widespread as it covers different microcontrollers and what this post is based on.

For STM32, check out the Peripheral Access Crates by the stm32-rs ream. For higher-level access, I wrote This HAL library for STM32. Works on most newer variants, and includes examples for specific peripherals, and simple applications.

Install probe-run (this is optional, but makes flashing easier)

This made me want to try getting some of these tools running. Probe run looked so handy, but it just doesn't work for me.

For flashing, Check out Kurling's Probe-run, and related tools like defmt, as well as their app template.

You don't need a USB file system for a convenient dev experience. In fact you can achieve an even more integrated experience with Rust today, on essentially any Cortex-M microcontroller if you set up probe-run. It makes cargo run flash and run the code on your microcontroller and can even be invoked with rust-analyzer's run button or an IDE command.

I've been looking for a way to debug my application like I would from GDB (ie: set breakpoints, inspect registers, step, etc.) but I haven't found any documentation on how to accomplish this with probe-run.