# How is SDL2 supposed to be used with CMake?

**URL:** <https://discourse.libsdl.org/t/how-is-sdl2-supposed-to-be-used-with-cmake/31275>\
**Category:** SDL Development\
**Created:** [April 15, 2021, 4:06am UTC](https://discourse.libsdl.org/t/how-is-sdl2-supposed-to-be-used-with-cmake/31275 "2021-04-15T04:06:27Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 17\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Daniel\_Gibson](https://discourse.libsdl.org/user_avatar/discourse.libsdl.org/daniel_gibson/32/3010_2.png) [@Daniel\_Gibson](https://discourse.libsdl.org/u/Daniel_Gibson)\
**Post date:** [April 15, 2021, 4:06am UTC](https://discourse.libsdl.org/t/how-is-sdl2-supposed-to-be-used-with-cmake/31275/1 "2021-04-15T04:06:27Z")

</div>

First, to avoid misunderstandings: This is **not** about _building SDL2_ with CMake. This is about _building **applications/games** that use SDL2_ with CMake - with -dev packages from packages managers (of Linux distros, vcpkg, whatever) or the official [Development Libraries](https://www.libsdl.org/download-2.0.php).

Originally, SDL2 didn’t ship any cmake files, so people used custom `FindSDL2.cmake` scripts based on the SDL1.2 FindSDL.cmake shipped by CMake itself ([example](https://github.com/dhewm/dhewm3/blob/5639720c1c0021737dfe7c83fcab892cca49fb7f/neo/sys/cmake/FindSDL2.cmake) - yes, this is older than SDL 2.0.0!).  
Those usually provided `${SDL2_INCLUDE_DIR}` (for CMake’s `include_directories()`) and `${SDL2_LIBRARY}` (for CMake’s `target_link_libraries()`).

SDL 2.0.4 (Jan 2016) introduced **`sdl2-config.cmake`** which provide `${SDL2_INCLUDE_DIRS}` and `${SDL2_LIBRARIES}` (notice the plurals) instead, which I think can be used much in the same way as the ones from the custom `FindSDL2.cmake` files.

SDL 2.0.6 (Sep 2017) **additionally** introduced **`SDL2Config.cmake`** which appears to work entirely differently. It does **not** provide `${SDL2_INCLUDE_DIRS}` and `${SDL2_INCLUDE_DIRS}`.  
TBH, it’s hard to understand what it does at all, because SDL2Config.cmake itself does nothing more than `include("${CMAKE_CURRENT_LIST_DIR}/SDL2Targets.cmake")`, and `SDL2Targets.cmake` is generated by CMake, does a lot of magic and has no comments that’d describe how to actually _use_ it.  
Apparently it defines libraries called `SDL2::SDL2` and `SDL2::SDL2main` that you can then somehow use? Possibly by passing `SDL2::SDL2` to CMake’s `target_link_libraries()` and maybe the include path is set automagically then?  
I don’t know and this gets me to the main problem here:

Some Linux distros (or package managers) ship `sdl2-config.cmake` others ship the incompatible `SDL2Config.cmake`.  
Debian (and thus Ubuntu; I’m on XUbuntu) ships `sdl2-config.cmake`, Arch Linux ships `SDL2Config.cmake`, and apparently so does vcpkg (at least that was my impression based on bug reports I got in dhewm3 when I tried removing the custom FindSDL2.cmake).

**SDL2-devel-2.0.\*-VC.zip** contains neither (which is unfortunate, especially with VC it might be handy).  
**SDL2-devel-2.0.\*-mingw.tar.gz** contains `sdl2-config.cmake`, but in a broken state, as it hardcodes `/opt/local/x86_64-w64-mingw32`. At least that could be relatively easily fixed by using `${CMAKE_CURRENT_LIST_DIR}`, which is the current directory sdl2-config.cmake is in, kinda like [this](https://github.com/dhewm/dhewm3-libs/commit/fc9f4ce5426d161bedb190647dd6abcdd327d65a).

Anyway, the core problem is that it is (or at least seems to me) very hard to make your own project that uses CMake and SDL build on all the current/relevant Linux distros (and other package managers), because for some reason two incompatible “solutions” exist.  
Or am I missing something and it’s indeed feasible to be compatible with either without too much pain?

**Wait** - if you’re gonna tell me that `sdl2-config.cmake` now also provides `SDL2::SDL2` (like `SDL2Config.cmake`), that’s nice and all, but not helpful, because that was only added in **2.0.12** (March 2020), and I _at least_ need to support **SDL2 back to 2.0.8** on Linux, because Ubuntu 18.04LTS ships that version (and Debian and Raspbian stable ship 2.0.9); even Ubuntu _20.04 LTS_ ships 2.0.10 (i.e. does not support `SDL2::SDL2`).

Why are there two different mechanisms anyway?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![OKUMURA\_Yuki](https://discourse.libsdl.org/user_avatar/discourse.libsdl.org/okumura_yuki/32/2481_2.png) [@OKUMURA\_Yuki](https://discourse.libsdl.org/u/OKUMURA_Yuki)\
**Post date:** [April 15, 2021, 1:29pm UTC](https://discourse.libsdl.org/t/how-is-sdl2-supposed-to-be-used-with-cmake/31275/2 "2021-04-15T13:29:30Z")

</div>

> Why are there two different mechanisms anyway?

(Except Windows,) why not “pkg-config sdl2 --libs” and “pkg-config sdl2 --cflags” ? So now three mechanisms. In case using distro-provided packages is hard requirement, I’d guess that would be the best bet; CMake provides FindPkgConfig module and AFAIK it works with any major Linux distros and BSD ports. You should never need SDLmain for pkg-config-aware platforms aside MinGW/MSYS.

When compared with sdl2-config or pkg-config, CMake packaging standard is still young so IMHO i’d recommend to stick with pkg-config or FindSDL2.cmake (that is, find\_library)…

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Daniel\_Gibson](https://discourse.libsdl.org/user_avatar/discourse.libsdl.org/daniel_gibson/32/3010_2.png) [@Daniel\_Gibson](https://discourse.libsdl.org/u/Daniel_Gibson)\
**Post date:** [April 15, 2021, 5:27pm UTC](https://discourse.libsdl.org/t/how-is-sdl2-supposed-to-be-used-with-cmake/31275/3 "2021-04-15T17:27:48Z")

</div>

pkg-config and sdl2-config don’t work well with CMake:

- at least sdl2-config has no way to just return the include directory, it’s part of the cflags
- pkg-config has `--cflags-only-I`, but that still returns something like `-I/usr/include/SDL2`, not just the path

and they’re are not available on all platforms:

- pkg-config is only available on Unix-likes (not even sure if on all of them)
- sdl2-config is often either not in $PATH on windows, or not available at all - it’s not included in SDL2-devel-2.0.\*-VC.zip

A custom FindSDL2.cmake seems to work best, but it’s ugly and only works if SDL2 is installed in one of a few hardcoded places (or if the `SDL2DIRS` environment variable is explicitly set).

OTOH, the SDL2 CMake configs are also only available if either installed in some standard path CMake searches or if you tell CMake to search there - but the difference is, that these standardpaths are hardcoded into the local CMake installation, while the ones in FindSDL2.cmake are hardcoded into your **own** file that’s part of your source code…

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![OKUMURA\_Yuki](https://discourse.libsdl.org/user_avatar/discourse.libsdl.org/okumura_yuki/32/2481_2.png) [@OKUMURA\_Yuki](https://discourse.libsdl.org/u/OKUMURA_Yuki)\
**Post date:** [April 15, 2021, 6:53pm UTC](https://discourse.libsdl.org/t/how-is-sdl2-supposed-to-be-used-with-cmake/31275/4 "2021-04-15T18:53:13Z")

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> [@Daniel\_Gibson](#):
>
> pkg-config has `--cflags-only-I`, but that still returns something like `-I/usr/include/SDL2`, not just the path

FindPkgConfig( [FindPkgConfig — CMake 3.30.1 Documentation](https://cmake.org/cmake/help/latest/module/FindPkgConfig.html) ) will do all required plumbing. Its `pkg_check_modules` will set `SDL2_INCLUDE_DIRS` using `--cflags-only-I` option – it parses `pkg-config` output automagically. `pkg-config` is the standard way to manage X11 packages thus I’d be surprised if there were any GUI-enabled distro lacking `pkg-config` (or `pkgconf` as drop-in replacement)…

Windows and macOS simply lacks standard library packaging system so you will have to do manual configuration or explicitly target some particular 3rd party packaging like `vcpkg` or homebrew, regardless whether or not your project is in CMake. `sdl2-config.cmake` or `SDL2Config.cmake` is for [CMake standard packaging](https://cmake.org/cmake/help/latest/manual/cmake-packages.7.html) and it may fill this gap in the future – currently, SDL’s CMake buildsystem is still in experimental state IIRC thus official package does not generate proper `SDL2Targets.cmake` (so it’s hardly usable, and so I’m not sure how devs think about CMake buildsystem…).

So, if you really wanted to avoid any hardcoded paths, I would do: `find_package(PkgConfig)` first, then if the system had one, use `pkg_check_modules` to get paths. If the system could not find pkgconfig or path, [ask users to set SDL2 development files path manually](https://trenki2.github.io/blog/2017/06/02/using-sdl2-with-cmake/#windows) through some variable and use it.

(I use Vulkan SDK for the purpose on the Windows. Its installer will set environment variable and provides .lib and headers as well as SDL2 DLL. )

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Daniel\_Gibson](https://discourse.libsdl.org/user_avatar/discourse.libsdl.org/daniel_gibson/32/3010_2.png) [@Daniel\_Gibson](https://discourse.libsdl.org/u/Daniel_Gibson)\
**Post date:** [April 16, 2021, 8:26am UTC](https://discourse.libsdl.org/t/how-is-sdl2-supposed-to-be-used-with-cmake/31275/5 "2021-04-16T08:26:32Z")

</div>

So it seems that right now the most reliable way to use SDL2 with CMake is (at least on non-Windows) to use `FindPkgConfig`… that’s good to know but a bit sobering :-/

I thought about what could be done to improve things a bit.  
I _think_ it would be very desirable that `SDL2Config.cmake` also provides `SDL2_LIBRARIES` and `SDL2_INCLUDE_DIRS`, ideally also the other things defined in `sdl2-config.cmake` (`SDL2_LIBDIR`, `SDL2_EXEC_PREFIX`, `SDL2_PREFIX`). That way both sdl2 configs for cmake would behave about the same, at least in the future.

I think this is preferable over expecting everyone to switch to using `SDL2::SDL2`, because:

- I assume that there’s lots of existing code using `SDL2_LIBRARY_DIRS` etc, because most distros ship `sdl2-config.cmake` (I checked debian/Ubuntu, SUSE, centos, the FreeBSD package)
- So far the only ones I know of shipping `SDL2Config.cmake` are Arch (and derivatives) and vcpkg. The good thing about those is that (AFAIK) they always ship the latest release version of SDL2, so the change would reach affected users long before for example Ubuntu LTS users will get an SDL2 version that supports `SDL2::SDL2` (from `sdl2-config.cmake` of SDL 2.0.12+) - assuming SDL 2.0.16 will be released before the next Ubuntu LTS release (22.04) 😉
  - My guess is that what .cmake file is shipped depends on whether they build SDL2 with autotools (=\> `sdl2-config.cmake`) or CMake (=\> `SDL2Config.cmake`)?

But this is pure theory until we figure out how to modify `SDL2Config.cmake` to export `SDL2_LIBRARY_DIRS` etc - and what those should look like. The general idea would be to extract them from the CMake library _target_ `SDL2::SDL2`. “They” are _properties_ of that _target_, which can be accessed like `get_target_property(<newvarname> <target> <property>)`.

For the include paths it’s easy enough: `get_target_property(SDL2_INCLUDE_DIRS SDL2::SDL2 INTERFACE_INCLUDE_DIRECTORIES)`.

But `SDL2_LIBRARY_DIRS` is more difficult:

1. I’m not even sure what this should even look like for MSVC (Visual C++). For GCC/MinGW and similar, it looks like `"-L/sdl2/install/prefix/lib/ -lSDL2"`. MinGW seems to have some additional linker flags, like `-lmingw32 -mwindows`. So it’s arguments for a `ld`-like linker, most probably not useful for MSVC?
  - when I tried to get rid of FindSDL2.cmake in dhewm3, I did something like the following in `sdl2-config.cmake` in [the repo holding the windows build dependencies of dhewm3](https://github.com/dhewm/dhewm3-libs/c):

```auto
if(MSVC)
  set(SDL2_LIBRARIES "SDL2")
else()
  set(SDL2_LIBRARIES "-lmingw32 -lSDL2 -mwindows")
endif()

```

This doesn’t contain SDL2main (as dhewm3 uses its own patched SDL\_main), but that could be added of course (I think like `set(SDL2_LIBRARIES "SDL2;SDL2main")`), but it also requires an explicit `link_directories(${SDL2_LIBDIR})` which for non-MSVC is not necessary (as the libdir is also set in `SDL2_LIBRARIES`).  
And keep in mind that for a more generic cmake config (that’s not specific for windows), even more `if()`s are needed to handle non-Windows platforms - and to make it work with vcpkg’s SDL2 package one would probably also have to handle `SDL2` vs `SDL2d`…
  - This is also a problem of `sdl2-config.cmake`, of course, not just one of making `SDL2Config.cmake` behave like it.

2. Related: Should `SDL2_LIBRARY_DIRS` contain `SDL2main` or not? `SDL2::SDL2` doesn’t seem to automatically link against `SDL2main` (at least on Windows/vcpkg), there’s an explicit `SDL2::SDL2main` for that. I’d actually like that (as I mentioned, dhewm3 doesn’t use SDL2main, even on Windows) - but the current behavior of `SDL2_LIBRARY_DIRS` (if it’s available and works at all) is to link both
3. It’s unclear which _target properties_ of `SDL2::SDL2` hold the information that’s needed.
  - In the SDL2 version of **vcpkg** , there’s `IMPORTED_IMPLIB_DEBUG` and `IMPORTED_IMPLIB_RELEASE` which contain the full paths to `SDL2.lib` and `SDL2d.lib` - yes, ~~apparently the vcpkg SDL2 package maintainer thought it was a good idea to provide a debug and a release version of SDL2~~ _(UPDATE: turns out, when creating a SDL2 debug build with cmake on Windows you always get SDL2d.lib/.dll - maybe it’s a CMake thing or even intentional)_, even though SDL2 (at least by default) doesn’t link against the C runtime and thus should be unaffected by that MS CRT debug vs release runtime mess.
  - On **Arch Linux** [I’ve been told](https://github.com/RobertBeckebans/RBDOOM-3-BFG/issues/469#issuecomment-820872721) it’s in `IMPORTED_LOCATION_NOCONFIG`, which is not defined in vcpkg (I’m not sure what exactly it looks like, but it should probably contain the full path to libSDL2.so or something)
  - As this is all from code magically generated by CMake, I could imagine that the property that actually holds that could change between CMake versions? I mean, if you use `SDL2::SDL2` like you’re supposed to (just passing it to `target_link_libraries()` instead of trying to extract information from it), it doesn’t matter which of several roughly equivalent properties holds it…

An alternative to trying to recreate an equivalent `SDL2_LIBRARY_DIRS` might be just `set(SDL2_LIBRARY_DIRS SDL2::SDL2)` - even though they are quite different things, both can be passed to `target_link_libraries()` to link the specified target against SDL2.  
If however someone does something more fancy that relies on `SDL2_LIBRARY_DIRS` being a string (like printing it or maybe trying to cut out `-lSDL2main` or whatever), that will fail of course.

Well… does anyone have any thoughts on all this? Ideas how to best make it work?

_ **Small Update:** I think I’ll be able to get `SDL2Config.cmake` to provide `SDL2_LIBRARY_DIRS`, `SDL2_INCLUDE_DIRS` etc - I have something that works on Windows for both MSVC and MinGW, and for both self-compiled (with CMake+MSVC) SDL2 and the one provided by vcpkg; Linux etc still TODO - but gotta sleep before I can show anything._

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Daniel\_Gibson](https://discourse.libsdl.org/user_avatar/discourse.libsdl.org/daniel_gibson/32/3010_2.png) [@Daniel\_Gibson](https://discourse.libsdl.org/u/Daniel_Gibson)\
**Post date:** [April 18, 2021, 3:41am UTC](https://discourse.libsdl.org/t/how-is-sdl2-supposed-to-be-used-with-cmake/31275/6 "2021-04-18T03:41:56Z")

</div>

I posted a (not so short) summary and some additional thoughts at [[cmake] SDL2Config and SDL2Target not exporting SDL2\_INCLUDE\_DIRS · Issue #4004 · libsdl-org/SDL · GitHub](https://github.com/libsdl-org/SDL/issues/4004)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Daniel\_Gibson](https://discourse.libsdl.org/user_avatar/discourse.libsdl.org/daniel_gibson/32/3010_2.png) [@Daniel\_Gibson](https://discourse.libsdl.org/u/Daniel_Gibson)\
**Post date:** [April 21, 2021, 4:59am UTC](https://discourse.libsdl.org/t/how-is-sdl2-supposed-to-be-used-with-cmake/31275/7 "2021-04-21T04:59:04Z")

</div>

A (WIP) Pull Request addressing some of these issues: [WIP: Improve sdl2-config.cmake.in and SDL2Config.cmake by DanielGibson · Pull Request #4320 · libsdl-org/SDL · GitHub](https://github.com/libsdl-org/SDL/pull/4320)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![meijihuaren](https://discourse.libsdl.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/848f3c/32.png) [@meijihuaren](https://discourse.libsdl.org/u/meijihuaren)\
**Post date:** [April 29, 2021, 6:27pm UTC](https://discourse.libsdl.org/t/how-is-sdl2-supposed-to-be-used-with-cmake/31275/8 "2021-04-29T18:27:54Z")

</div>

Hello,

I found this thread searching through google, and it seems like I’m not alone. I’m not a developer, but I am trying to build someone else’s project who does use C99 and the latest version of SDL2 and I’m stumped.

I’m currently using Mingw and Cmake, and I can’t figure out how to get this project to build properly.

This is what part of the CMAKE looks like. I tried pointing it towards the SDL2 source code, and CMAKE asks me for SDL2targets which doesn’t even make sense because it gets created when you build SDL2 separately. I really don’t know how this person figured out how to build with it when it seems people in this thread are having problems too. Can anyone chime in? Sorry for the dumb questions. Thanks.

```
find_package(SDL2 REQUIRED)
find_package(PhysFS REQUIRED)
set(PLATFORM_LIBRARIES
	SDL2::SDL2
	${PHYSFS_LIBRARY}
)
set(PLATFORM_INCLUDE_DIRS
	${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR}
	${SRC}
	${SRC}/Platform/${PLATFORM_NAME}/PlatformSupport
	${SDL2_INCLUDE_DIRS}
	${PHYSFS_INCLUDE_DIR}
)
```

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Daniel\_Gibson](https://discourse.libsdl.org/user_avatar/discourse.libsdl.org/daniel_gibson/32/3010_2.png) [@Daniel\_Gibson](https://discourse.libsdl.org/u/Daniel_Gibson)\
**Post date:** [April 29, 2021, 9:00pm UTC](https://discourse.libsdl.org/t/how-is-sdl2-supposed-to-be-used-with-cmake/31275/9 "2021-04-29T21:00:40Z")

</div>

Hi @meijihuaren!  
Did you (try to) build SDL2 yourself?  
If you want to build it with MinGW and want it to work with CMake at all, I’d suggest building it with autotools (`./configure --prefix=/path/to/install/sdl2/` then `make -j8` and finally `make install`), as the SDL2Config.cmake (or rather SDL2Targets.cmake) generated by CMake for MinGW is completely broken at the moment.  
Afterwards you should be able to set `SDL2_DIR` to the directory `sdl2-config.cmake` was installed to (should be something like `/path/to/install/sdl2/lib/cmake/SDL2/`) and in CMakeLists.txt do

```nohighlight
find_package(SDL2 REQUIRED)
include_directories(${SDL2_INCLUDE_DIR})
target_link_libraries(YourApp ${SDL2_LIBRARIES})

```

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![meijihuaren](https://discourse.libsdl.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/848f3c/32.png) [@meijihuaren](https://discourse.libsdl.org/u/meijihuaren)\
**Post date:** [April 30, 2021, 2:54pm UTC](https://discourse.libsdl.org/t/how-is-sdl2-supposed-to-be-used-with-cmake/31275/10 "2021-04-30T14:54:38Z")

</div>

Hello, thanks for responding.

Yes I tried to build SDL2 myself, which is how I found out about the SDL2targets.cmake being made there. I had no idea I had to build SDL2 to use it with the library instead of just pointing the directory to the build files of SDL2.

I tried using MSYS to use autotools, and .configure worked fine. However, when I ran make -j8, I got a bunch of errors such as:

```
src/joystick/windows/SDL_rawinputjoystick.c:282:5: error: unknown type name 'XINPUT_STATE_EX'
     XINPUT_STATE_EX state;
     ^ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
src/joystick/windows/SDL_rawinputjoystick.c:283:5: error: unknown type name 'XINPUT_BATTERY_INFORMATION_EX'
     XINPUT_BATTERY_INFORMATION_EX battery;
     ^ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
src/joystick/windows/SDL_rawinputjoystick.c:287:16: error: 'XUSER_MAX_COUNT' undeclared here (not in a function)
 } xinput_state[XUSER_MAX_COUNT];
                ^ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
src/joystick/windows/SDL_rawinputjoystick.c: In function 'RAWINPUT_UpdateXInput':
src/joystick/windows/SDL_rawinputjoystick.c:297:13: error: unknown type name 'XINPUT_CAPABILITIES'
             XINPUT_CAPABILITIES capabilities;
             ^ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

```

I have no clue what’s going on. I don’t know autotools at all so I’m not sure if this is normal or not.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Daniel\_Gibson](https://discourse.libsdl.org/user_avatar/discourse.libsdl.org/daniel_gibson/32/3010_2.png) [@Daniel\_Gibson](https://discourse.libsdl.org/u/Daniel_Gibson)\
**Post date:** [April 30, 2021, 3:30pm UTC](https://discourse.libsdl.org/t/how-is-sdl2-supposed-to-be-used-with-cmake/31275/11 "2021-04-30T15:30:37Z")

</div>

Sounds like some directx headers are incomplete - maybe you have a very old version of mingw?

BTW, If you’re on Windows, I’d suggest using Visual Studio (the free Community Edition), it tends to be less painful and has a better debugger.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![rtrussell](https://discourse.libsdl.org/user_avatar/discourse.libsdl.org/rtrussell/32/4768_2.png) [@rtrussell](https://discourse.libsdl.org/u/rtrussell)\
**Post date:** [April 30, 2021, 4:16pm UTC](https://discourse.libsdl.org/t/how-is-sdl2-supposed-to-be-used-with-cmake/31275/12 "2021-04-30T16:16:15Z")

</div>

> [@Daniel\_Gibson](#):
>
> BTW, If you’re on Windows, I’d suggest using Visual Studio

I know this is an uncommon scenario (although it’s extremely important to me) but perhaps worth noting that Microsoft’s compiler provides **no support at all** for 80-bit (extended precision) long doubles, so if you need this data type you must use GCC.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Daniel\_Gibson](https://discourse.libsdl.org/user_avatar/discourse.libsdl.org/daniel_gibson/32/3010_2.png) [@Daniel\_Gibson](https://discourse.libsdl.org/u/Daniel_Gibson)\
**Post date:** [May 16, 2021, 5:09am UTC](https://discourse.libsdl.org/t/how-is-sdl2-supposed-to-be-used-with-cmake/31275/13 "2021-05-16T05:09:29Z")

</div>

My Pull Request that hopefully fixes some of these issues is now ready: [Improve sdl2-config.cmake.in and SDL2Config.cmake by DanielGibson · Pull Request #4320 · libsdl-org/SDL · GitHub](https://github.com/libsdl-org/SDL/pull/4320) - it would be cool of someone could test it, especially if you’re not using Windows or Linux (those are the platforms I could test myself).

There is a small test application at [SDL2 + CMake test · GitHub](https://gist.github.com/DanielGibson/ca02b1692499ce4911f7884dc0a67bbf)  
Build and install SDL2 yourself (with the [branch of the pull request](https://github.com/DanielGibson/SDL/tree/improve-cmake-configs) that you can [also download as a .zip](https://github.com/DanielGibson/SDL/archive/refs/heads/improve-cmake-configs.zip)) - either with CMake or with autotools (./configure && make -j4 && make install) or ideally try both 🙂  
Then try to build my test application with that freshly installed SDL2:  
In the directory with my CMakeLists.txt and main.cpp, do

```auto
mkdir build
cd build
cmake -DSDL2_DIR=/path/to/sdl2-installation/lib/cmake/SDL2/ ..
make

```

This should create two executables, `SDL2Test` and `SDL2Test2` that should both show a grey window when started - it can be closed with `[Q]` or `Esc`.

Thanks in advance!

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![seyuup](https://discourse.libsdl.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@seyuup](https://discourse.libsdl.org/u/seyuup)\
**Post date:** [October 5, 2021, 4:16pm UTC](https://discourse.libsdl.org/t/how-is-sdl2-supposed-to-be-used-with-cmake/31275/14 "2021-10-05T16:16:20Z")

</div>

Hello, I recently downloaded and built the source for SDL2 with CMake (Unix Makefile) on MacOS.

The changes you recently made this year have been merged with the latest version (2.0.16) as far as I know, but I am facing an issue trying to get SDL2 to work with CMake and CLion (JetBrains C++ IDE).

I posted this question in the (unofficial?) Discord, but figured I could create a post here as well since it seemed relevant.

I built SDL2 from source and have the files in this directory:

```auto
/Users/usernamehere/SDL2/SDL2-2.0.16-install

```

Here is my CMakeLists.txt:

```auto
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.20)

project(HelloSDL2)

set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD 11)
set(SOURCE_FILES main.cpp)

add_executable(HelloSDL2 ${SOURCE_FILES})

include_directories(/Users/usernamehere/SDL2/SDL2-2.0.16-install)
set(SDL2_DIR /Users/usernamehere/SDL2/SDL2-2.0.16-install/lib/cmake/SDL2)

find_package(SDL2 REQUIRED)

INCLUDE_DIRECTORIES(${SDL2_INCLUDE_DIR})
TARGET_LINK_LIBRARIES(${PROJECT_NAME} ${SDL2_LIBRARY})

```

Unfortunately, I am getting the following error:

```auto
CMake Error at /Users/usernamehere/SDL2/SDL2-2.0.16-install/lib/cmake/SDL2/SDL2Config.cmake:94 (get_filename_component):
  get_filename_component called with incorrect number of arguments

```

Where the method:  
`get_filename_component`

Is called in SDL2Config.cmake:  
`get_filename_component(SDL2_EXEC_PREFIX ${SDL2_LIBDIR} PATH)`

I’m assuming I’ve missed some other configuration I need to add to my CMakeLists.txt, or maybe its due to where I installed SDL2 since it isn’t in the default usr/local directory.

Maybe you (or someone who finds this topic) can help me with this issue.

**Update**  
Ok, in my particular case, I did a **Debug** build for SDL2. So this problem might not have occurred for others that did a Normal/Release build.

In the SDL2Config.cmake file, there is a condition that tries to replace the two variables:

```auto
sdl2implib
sdl2mainimplib

```

with the debug variables:

```auto
sdl2implibdbg
sdl2mainimplibdbg

```

However, the code was not extracting the actual path from the Debug variables using the ${…} notation.

Here is the change that fixed it for me.

```auto
if( (NOT sdl2implib) AND sdl2implibdbg ) # if we only have a debug version of the lib
    set(sdl2implib ${sdl2implibdbg})
endif()
if( (NOT sdl2mainimplib) AND sdl2mainimplibdbg ) # if we only have a debug version of the lib
    set(sdl2mainimplib ${sdl2mainimplibdbg})
endif()

```

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![eri0o](https://discourse.libsdl.org/user_avatar/discourse.libsdl.org/eri0o/32/4277_2.png) [@eri0o](https://discourse.libsdl.org/u/eri0o)\
**Post date:** [October 5, 2021, 6:57pm UTC](https://discourse.libsdl.org/t/how-is-sdl2-supposed-to-be-used-with-cmake/31275/15 "2021-10-05T18:57:02Z")

</div>

I simply use the FetchContent on its source code and build it linked to my project and it works fine. 🙂

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Daniel\_Gibson](https://discourse.libsdl.org/user_avatar/discourse.libsdl.org/daniel_gibson/32/3010_2.png) [@Daniel\_Gibson](https://discourse.libsdl.org/u/Daniel_Gibson)\
**Post date:** [October 5, 2021, 7:12pm UTC](https://discourse.libsdl.org/t/how-is-sdl2-supposed-to-be-used-with-cmake/31275/16 "2021-10-05T19:12:07Z")

</div>

> [@seyuup](#):
>
> However, the code was not extracting the actual path from the Debug variables using the ${…} notation.
> 
> Here is the change that fixed it for me.
> 
> ```auto
> if( (NOT sdl2implib) AND sdl2implibdbg ) # if we only have a debug version of the lib
> set(sdl2implib ${sdl2implibdbg})
> endif()
> if( (NOT sdl2mainimplib) AND sdl2mainimplibdbg ) # if we only have a debug version of the lib
> set(sdl2mainimplib ${sdl2mainimplibdbg})
> endif()
> 
> ```

Damn, you’re right of course, I missed that.  
I blame CMakes inconsistent syntax 😛

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Daniel\_Gibson](https://discourse.libsdl.org/user_avatar/discourse.libsdl.org/daniel_gibson/32/3010_2.png) [@Daniel\_Gibson](https://discourse.libsdl.org/u/Daniel_Gibson)\
**Post date:** [October 6, 2021, 1:43am UTC](https://discourse.libsdl.org/t/how-is-sdl2-supposed-to-be-used-with-cmake/31275/17 "2021-10-06T01:43:15Z")

</div>

There’s a fix in [https://github.com/libsdl-org/SDL/pull/4814](https://github.com/libsdl-org/SDL/pull/4814) (already merged)