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buildideembeddedbuild-system

What is "build system" in the embedded domain?

I work in the embedded C programming domain and someone asked me what's the build system of my project. I am working in STM32CubeIDE using |GNU Tools for STM32| toolchain. I didn't have to create a Makefile for my project as it's automatically generated by the IDE. So what is build-system? Is it referring to how I build the project?

Does the image below have any relevance of the build-system?

enter image description here

Any information will be helpful. Thanks.

Solution

  • Since it is set to "external builder" and GNU tools, then presumably make - though not necessarily - the IDE could implement its own management rather then explicitly generating and executing a makefile.

    If you are exclusively using the IDE to manage and generate the build for you then "STM32CubeIDE with GNU Tools" is probably a reasonable answer too regardless of how it actually implements it. Knowing what tool it uses under the hood is useful if you have to do command line builds for continuous integration or automated release for example.