Setting up SDL3 for Windows using CMake and MinGW-w64

[8Observer8]

I have made a step by step tutorial to set up SDL3 for Windows using CMake and MinGW-w64: Setting up SDL3 for Windows using CMake and MinGW-w64

Table of contents:

• Setting up SDL3 for Windows using CMake and MinGW-w64
• Compilation a very simple “Hello, World” example to EXE
• Creating a window using SDL3 and writing code in the separated “main.cpp” file
• Qt Creator IDE
• Creating an OpenGL window in Qt Creator
• Embeding text files to EXE

If you have any problems following the instructions, please write in this topic about it.

Discord topic

[8Observer8]

• How to hide the console
• Embeding textures to EXE using the “embed” library
• Building ImGUI statically and setting up it to the CMake project

[jamesL]

as someone who knows nothing about cmake, do you have the time to explain the flags you used here

cmake -G "MinGW Makefiles" --fresh -S . -B dist -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=E:\libs\sdl3-desktop-prefix

[Mathias]

With these 2 commands you can get some information:

cmake --help

cmake-gui .

[8Observer8]

cmake -G “MinGW Makefiles” --fresh -S . -B dist -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=E:\libs\sdl3-desktop-prefix

cmake --help

• “-G <generator-name>” - Specify a build system generator
• “MinGW Makefiles” - Generates a make file for use with mingw32-make
• “–fresh” - Configure a fresh build tree, removing any existing cache file
• “-S <path-to-source>” - Explicitly specify a source directory
• “-B <path-to-build>” - Explicitly specify a build directory

Type in the console cmake-gui. Search for pre and hover the mouse pointer over CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX and you will see the description:

• “-DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=<path-to-dir>” - Install path prefix, prepended onto install directories.

[8Observer8]

I’ve updated the guides to SDL 3.1.3: Setting up SDL3 for Windows using CMake and MinGW-w64

• Setting up MinGW-w64 11.2
• Setting up CMake
• Build “Hello, World” in plain C++ from CMD
• Writting the batch files to config and build
• Setting up SDL 3.1.3
• Setting up Qt Creator with Qt 6.6.3
• Build “Hello, World” in plain C++ from Qt Creator
• Setting up GLAD
• Setting up SDL3 and GLAD in Qt Creator

[amd25]

Hi to all, sorry for my bad english language …
Hi 8Observer8 … Good Work for your tutorial… thx!!!
A small update …
Now is available for msys2 the package mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-sdl3 …so we can install it from shell ucrt64 with command pacman -S mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-sdl3

Now we don’t need download , unzip of sdl3 and we don’t need to change the environment variable path…

when this package is installed in msys2 we can continue to use your good tutorial
… Now your cmake configuration line in msys2 in shell ucrt64 changes to -DSDL3_DIR=/ucrt64/lib/cmake/SDL3

Now we can continue to follow your wonderful tutorial thank you again!!!

Thank you again for your wonderful tut !!!