There are also other fully open options for STM32- libopencm3 (just HAL) or ChibiOS (an RTOS with HAL).
Fair enough. I'm sure the library itself isn't literally tied to the IDE, but it's not easy to find as a separate download, and there is little example code available online for the HAL library.
> libopencm3
It's a nice project, but I prefer to use vendor-supplied libs unless there's a good reason not to. Efmlib has a permissive license and seems pretty nice from my relatively limited experience of it.
>You can also use plain old make if that's what you prefer.
This is the thing. I really want to be able to easily set up a project just using GNU make and the regular arm gcc toolchain. I've found it easier to do that on the whole with the EFM32.
http://www.st.com/en/evaluation-tools/stm32f0discovery.html
http://www.silabs.com/products/development-tools/mcu/32-bit/...
The STM32 board includes an STLink programmer which you can use via OpenOCD. The EFM32 board includes a J-Link programmer and the IDE comes with the JLink command line tools. You may be able to use it via OpenOCD too, but I haven't tried that.
I prefer the EFM32 peripheral library (efmlib) to what's available for the STM32, which is either the old clunky Standard Peripheral Library or some new thing that's closely tied to their awful IDE.
If you use the EFM32 and the JLink software you can log using RTT (https://www.segger.com/jlink-rtt-viewer.html), which is much faster than using semihosting, which is the most straightforward option with the STM32.
The STM32 board has the advantage that you can set it up as a programmer by removing a jumper, whereas to set the EFM32 board as a programmer you have to load the horrible IDE and click buttons.
It's generally fairly easy to compile code for these chips using the arm embedded gcc toolchain:
https://launchpad.net/gcc-arm-embedded
The only tricky part is finding (or writing) a suitable '.ld' file. You can usually find one by poking around the files included with the IDE or with the peripheral libraries. In principle you can just write it yourself, if you know enough about ARM architecture, but that's above my pay grade.
Anyway, take all the advice above with a pinch of salt -- I'm no expert on this stuff. But sometimes the perspective of a relative newbie can be useful too.