Software Tools - STMicroelectronics STM8 Manual

Software Tools

Just like any other software developer, my choice of language for software development is C language.
I don't want to spend time coding complex stuffs in assembly language. Apart from that I chose C
language for the fact that STMicroelectronics has provided a Standard Peripheral Library (SPL) that is
very easy to use. With SPL, it becomes totally unnecessary to program each register with meaningless
numbers and maintain coding sequence. We will never need to access registers for any reasons as
everything is done under the hood of SPL. All sequences are deal inside the SPL. All that we will ever
need is the clear concept of each hardware block, their working principles, their capabilities and
limitations.
We will need an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and a C-language toolchain. The best
stuffs you can get your hands on at zero costs are ST Visual Develop (STVD) IDE and Cosmic C compiler.
Both are free but a rather difficult to use at first. STVD also comes with a programmer software tool
called ST Visual Programmer (STVP). We'll need STVP to upload codes to target STM8 micros.
Cosmic used to be a paid tool just like your PC's antivirus software but at the time of writing this article,
the Cosmic team has made it absolutely free for STM8 family. However, to use it you will need to
register and acquire a license key via email. Usually this procedure of acquiring license and registration
is maintained automatically by the software company's server but with Cosmic it is different story.
You will need to wait for some guy at Cosmic end to respond to your license request. It may take a
few minutes or even a day but still the best part is getting a full version compiler for nothing.
You can get
STVD from here: http://www.st.com/en/development-tools/stvd-stm8.html and
Cosmic C compiler from here: http://www.cosmic-software.com/download.php.