windows xp user here, trying to get the sdl library running together with the gnu gcc compiler with codeblocks IDE.>From what I can tell, you are supposed to extract the file SDL-devel-1.2.14-mingw32.tar.gz using a program called 7zip. However, the 7zip program is also in some sort of alternative compression format (.tar.bz2). So, how do we get the sdl library extracted? I’m under the impression that file I listed (sdl-devel-etc) is the right one rather than the runtime windows library. 7-zip was recommended by most of the googling I did. 
Oh, 7-zip is fine, I just figured it out and everything’s good.