Installation

Prerequisites

Arm Keil Studio is a set of extensions for Microsoft Visual Studio Code, which is required to be installed on your machine.

Installing Keil Studio

The Arm Keil Studio Pack (MDK v6) extension pack includes the extensions that are required to work with CMSIS solution projects.

  1. In VS Code, open the Extensions view.
  2. Type Arm in the search bar.
  3. Click on "Arm Kei Studio Pack" and README is shown on the right. It contains links to the included extensions. Their READMEs include minimal user guides. Keil Studio Pack README
  4. Click Install to start. You need to trust the publishers "Arm" and "LLVM" to install the extension pack. When the installation is finished, the CMSIS view icon CMSIS view icon appears in the activity bar.

Verify the installation

Once you have installed Keil Studio, you can verify your installation by following the getting started guide that opens automatically:

Get started with a CMSIS solution

It's best practice to create a new CMSIS solution based on a Blinky example, which typically flashes an LED on a target board.

Note

When creating a solution based on an example, all required tools and packs are installed automatically.

Set up a new workspace

If you want to install tools and packs separately, you have to create a new workspace in VS Code by opening a blank folder.

Tool installation

Required tools (such as a compiler toolchain or the CMSIS-Toolbox) are installed via the Arm Tools Environment Manager, controlled by the vcpkg-configuration.json file.

Open the Arm Tools Environment Manager via the command pallette (Ctrl/CMd + Shift + p) and select Arm Tools: Configure Arm Tools Environment. The "Arm Registry" opens:

Arm Registry

Select at least an "Arm CMSIS-Toolbox" version as this is required to be able to install packs. The Output pane shows the status of the "Arm Tools" installation.

Attention

  • If you are using Keil Studio for the first time, the Arm Tools Environment Manager needs to download required tools from the Internet. While may take a couple of minutes (depending on your internet connection), it is only required once.
  • You also need to provide a license. A free, non-commercial MDK-Community license can be activated from within the tool. If you need a commercial license, check our eStore or contact your preferred distributor.

Pack installation

CMSIS-Packs for device and board support as well as software delivery mechanism are an integral part of a CMSIS solution. Packs can be discovered online:

Each page contains information about how to download a pack with cpackget:

MDK-Middleware pack page

Run this command in a Terminal (you will be asked to accept the license agreement):

❯ cpackget add Keil::MDK-Middleware@8.0.0
I: Updating public index
I: Downloading index.pidx...
I: 100% |█████████████████████████████████████████████████████████| (216/216 kB, 405 kB/s)        
I: Updating PDSC files of public packs
I: Adding pack "Keil::MDK-Middleware@8.0.0"
I: Extracting files to /Users/chrsei01/.cache/arm/packs/Keil/MDK-Middleware/8.0.0...
I: 100% |█████████████████████████████████████████████████████████| (2180/2180, 2187 it/s)