Programming STM32 via SWD with Arduino IDE on Ubuntu

Oh Linux. I just wanted to quickly program an STM32 chip over SWD with the Arduino IDE for a blinky test but …

Issue #1 is that the AppImage runs in an isolated environment and does not load the .bashrc thus it does not have access to the STM32CubeProgrammer executable.

Issue #2 is the sandboxing issue (something about deprecation of unprivileged kernel namespaces affecting Electron applications)

These can both be fixed in the desktop entry by setting the environment variables when we run the AppImage:

Exec=env PATH=$PATH:/path/to/stm32cubeprogrammer /path/to/arduino-ide_2.X.X_Linux_64bit.AppImage --no-sandbox

But somehow that didn’t work for me 🤷, so a workaround is to execute the AppImage from within a bash session with the added --no-sandbox flag. Note the path to the STM32CubeProgrammer binary was already added in my ~/.bashrc.

Full Steps (Ubuntu >= 22.04)

1 - Download STM32CubeProgrammer

2 - Add the executable to the PATH Add the STM32CubeProgrammer executable to ~/.bashrc if it is installed in a place not visible by the default PATH, e.g. in ~/.bashrc add: export PATH=/usr/local/STMicroelectronics/STM32Cube/STM32CubeProgrammer/bin:$PATH

Verify executable visibility with which STM32_Programmer_CLI

See this stm32duino page for more.

3 - Install Arduino IDE 2 AppImage

4 - Make sure FUSE is installed to run the AppImage

sudo add-apt-repository universe
sudo apt install libfuse2

5 - (Skipped since I was using SWD) Add rule to /etc/udev/rules.d/99-arduino.rules (see instructions

6 - Arduino IDE - Add the Additional Boards Managers URL for the STM32 cores package See stm32duino Getting Started. File > Preferences > Additional Boards Managers URLs = (Add the URL from the link above)

7 - Arduino IDE - Install the board package Boards Manager > STM32 MCU based boards by STMicroelectronics

8 - Arduino IDE - Select board under Board menu

9 - (Optional depending on flashing method) Arduino IDE - Select port (note I was using SWD via the STLink v2 so I didn’t need to select a virtual COM port).

10 - Setup the AppImage desktop entry (typ. in ~/.local/share/applications/Arduino-ide.desktop) with e.g. Exec=/path/to/arduino-ide --no-sandbox Run the AppImage directly from a bash user terminal so that it has access to the CubeProgrammer. Note I needed. the --no-sandbox flag as there are still issues with sandboxing.