SDL Wiki

CMake

(www.cmake.org)

SDL's build system was traditionally based on autotools. Over time, this approach has suffered from several issues across the different supported platforms. To solve these problems, a new build system based on CMake was introduced. It is developed in parallel to the legacy autotools build system, so users can experiment with it without complication.

The CMake build system is supported on the following platforms:

Building SDL

Assuming the source for SDL is located at ~/sdl

cd ~
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ~/sdl
cmake --build .

This will build the static and dynamic versions of SDL in the ~/build directory. Installation can be done using:

cmake --install .        # '--install' requires CMake 3.15, or newer

Including SDL in your project

SDL can be included in your project in 2 major ways:

The following CMake script supports both, depending on the value of MYGAME_VENDORED.

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.5)
project(mygame)

# Create an option to switch between a system sdl library and a vendored sdl library
option(MYGAME_VENDORED "Use vendored libraries" OFF)

if(MYGAME_VENDORED)
    add_subdirectory(vendored/sdl EXCLUDE_FROM_ALL)
else()
    # 1. Look for a SDL2 package, 2. look for the SDL2 component and 3. fail if none can be found
    find_package(SDL2 REQUIRED CONFIG REQUIRED COMPONENTS SDL2)

    # 1. Look for a SDL2 package, 2. Look for the SDL2maincomponent and 3. DO NOT fail when SDL2main is not available
    find_package(SDL2 REQUIRED CONFIG COMPONENTS SDL2main)
endif()

# Create your game executable target as usual
add_executable(mygame WIN32 mygame.c)

# SDL2::SDL2main may or may not be available. It is e.g. required by Windows GUI applications
if(TARGET SDL2::SDL2main)
    # It has an implicit dependency on SDL2 functions, so it MUST be added before SDL2::SDL2 (or SDL2::SDL2-static)
    target_link_libraries(mygame PRIVATE SDL2::SDL2main)
endif()

# Link to the actual SDL2 library. SDL2::SDL2 is the shared SDL library, SDL2::SDL2-static is the static SDL libarary.
target_link_libraries(mygame PRIVATE SDL2::SDL2)

A system SDL library

For CMake to find SDL, it must be installed in a default location CMake is looking for.

The following components are available, to be used as an argument of find_package.

Component name Description
SDL2 The SDL2 shared library, available through the SDL2::SDL2 target ^SDL_TARGET_EXCEPTION
SDL2-static The SDL2 static library, available through the SDL2::SDL2-static target
SDL2main The SDL2main static library, available through the SDL2::SDL2main target
SDL2test The SDL2test static library, available through the SDL2::SDL2test target

Using a vendored SDL

This only requires a copy of SDL in a subdirectory.

CMake configuration options for platforms

iOS/tvOS

CMake 3.14+ natively includes support for iOS and tvOS. SDL binaries may be built using Xcode or Make, possibly among other build-systems.

When using a recent version of CMake (3.14+), it should be possible to:

To use, set the following CMake variables when running CMake's configuration stage:

Examples

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