Yep. Did that tonight. Took a long time - downloading VS2019 and the rest of the tool chain, but basically no big problems. I had to mess around with cmake... had to edit cmake-tools-kits.json and put the preferredGenerator VS2019 stuff on top and that seemed to do it. Everything in the examples directory built. Only ran blink so far because it is getting late, but so far, so good.
I'm really puzzled by their choice of going the VS 2019 buildtools and NMake way, I don't see any particular benefit and it carries along a shitload of unrelated stuff.
Moreover, if used in a commercial environment, there are a number of quite serious
license limitations*, so it's a bit of a dumb decision.
Python, Cmake and regular (gnu) make - and of course VS Code - work perfectly on Windows, I have many projects using the same set of cmakelists and makefiles on Linux and Windows, with just some different build conf in VS Code.
Another available option on Windows is always to use WSL remoting in VS Code, it's easy to set up a build environment where compilation is carried on in WSL, with Windows native debugging.
Maybe they could prepare a prebuilt Windows openocd package, instead of having to go through the pain to also install MSYS and compile it.
BTW, chocolatey will painless install Cmake, make, ninja and the likes.
OT:
And worst of all, without a serious IDE like the ones based on Eclipse (MCUxpresso, STM32CubeIde).
Ugh - probably we live in different universes, I took this as an extremely positive choice.
Rant follows: Every time I accost one of those (or anything Eclipse based) I feel
like this.
I have an ever-growing list of swearword laced grievances with MCUxpresso, I use it as way to let out some steam almost every time I use it.
Gimme VS Code, emacs or real VS anytime. Even vim in a pinch. cat > main.c. Wax tablets.
I'll put in a good remark on MCUxpresso, though: its projects work perfectly in Linux and Windows and Mac, with no changes at all, allowing to store them in a repo and work from your preferred (or available) environment.
*In practice, you need a Visual Studio license, and you are bound by its limits (e.g. simplifying, VS Community in an enterprise = only Open Source projects or education).