How to Use Sdl2 and Sdl_Image with Cmake

How to use SDL2 and SDL_image with cmake

I think that the following will work, as it finds the libraries on my ubuntu system and the example function you provided can link:

project(shooter-cmake2)

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 2.8)

set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "${CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS} -std=c++0x")

add_executable(${PROJECT_NAME} src/test.cpp)

INCLUDE(FindPkgConfig)

PKG_SEARCH_MODULE(SDL2 REQUIRED sdl2)
PKG_SEARCH_MODULE(SDL2IMAGE REQUIRED SDL2_image>=2.0.0)

INCLUDE_DIRECTORIES(${SDL2_INCLUDE_DIRS} ${SDL2IMAGE_INCLUDE_DIRS})
TARGET_LINK_LIBRARIES(${PROJECT_NAME} ${SDL2_LIBRARIES} ${SDL2IMAGE_LIBRARIES})

If cmake is executed with --debug-output it outputs:

-- Found PkgConfig: /usr/bin/pkg-config (found version "0.26") 
Called from: [2]    /usr/share/cmake-2.8/Modules/FindPkgConfig.cmake
            [1] $USER/stack-overflow/cmake-sdl2-image/CMakeLists.txt
-- checking for one of the modules 'sdl2'
Called from: [1]    $USER/stack-overflow/cmake-sdl2-image/CMakeLists.txt
-- checking for one of the modules 'SDL2_image>=2.0.0'
Called from: [1]    $USER/stack-overflow/cmake-sdl2-image/CMakeLists.txt

This made me check the contents of

/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/pkgconfig/sdl2.pc
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/pkgconfig/SDL2_image.pc

I noticed that SDL2_image.pc contains
Name: SDL2_image
which I assumed should match the third parameter to PKG_SEARCH_MODULE for this library.

Using SDL2 with CMake

Don't set the path to SDL2 by hand. Use the proper find command which uses FindSDL. Should look like:

find_file(SDL2_INCLUDE_DIR NAME SDL.h HINTS SDL2)
find_library(SDL2_LIBRARY NAME SDL2)
add_executable(ChickenShooter main.cpp)
target_include_directories(ChickenShooter ${SDL2_INCLUDE_DIR})
target_link_libraries(ChickenShooter ${SDL2_LIBRARY})    

If SDL2 is not found, you have to add the path to SDL2 to CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH, that's the place where CMake looks for installed software.

If you can use Pkg-config, its use might be easier, see How to use SDL2 and SDL_image with cmake

If you feel more comfortable to use a FindSDL2.cmake file similar to FindSDL.cmake provided by CMake, see https://brendanwhitfield.wordpress.com/2015/02/26/using-cmake-with-sdl2/

How to link SDL_ttf and SDL_image libraries using cmake in windows?

I found the problem:

1. In sdl2-image-lib and sdl2-ttf-lib directory there are libSDL2_image.dll.a and libSDL2_ttf.dll.a binary files that must be linked instead of libSDL2_image.a and libSDL2_ttf.a files.

2. dll files must be copied to the directory where the EXE file is located. the dll files are in bin folders of the library.

The libraries which I used for my project:
https://github.com/satayyeb/sdl2-libraries

and the modified CMakeLists.txt:

set(SOURCE src/main.c)
set(PROJECT_NAME island_soldier)
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.19)
project(${PROJECT_NAME} C)
set(CMAKE_C_STANDARD 11)


set(SDL2_INCLUDE_DIR     "${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/sdl2/sdl2-include")
set(SDL2_LIB_DIR         "${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/sdl2/sdl2-lib")

set(SDL2_GFX_INCLUDE_DIR "${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/sdl2/sdl2-gfx-include")
set(SDL2_GFX_LIB_DIR     "${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/sdl2/sdl2-gfx-lib")

set(SDL2_IMAGE_INCLUDE_DIR "${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/sdl2/sdl2-image-include")
set(SDL2_IMAGE_LIB_DIR     "${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/sdl2/sdl2-image-lib")

set(SDL2_TTF_INCLUDE_DIR "${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/sdl2/sdl2-ttf-include")
set(SDL2_TTF_LIB_DIR     "${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/sdl2/sdl2-ttf-lib")


set(SDL2_FLAGS   "-mwindows -Wl,--no-undefined -static-libgcc")


add_library(SDL2            STATIC IMPORTED)
add_library(SDL2main        STATIC IMPORTED)

add_library(SDL2_GFX        STATIC IMPORTED)

add_library(SDL2_IMAGE_DLL  STATIC IMPORTED)

add_library(SDL2_TTF_DLL    STATIC IMPORTED)



set_property(TARGET SDL2            PROPERTY IMPORTED_LOCATION "${SDL2_LIB_DIR}/libSDL2.a")
set_property(TARGET SDL2main        PROPERTY IMPORTED_LOCATION "${SDL2_LIB_DIR}/libSDL2main.a")

set_property(TARGET SDL2_GFX        PROPERTY IMPORTED_LOCATION "${SDL2_GFX_LIB_DIR}/libsdl-gfx.a")

set_property(TARGET SDL2_IMAGE_DLL  PROPERTY IMPORTED_LOCATION "${SDL2_IMAGE_LIB_DIR}/libSDL2_image.dll.a")

set_property(TARGET SDL2_TTF_DLL    PROPERTY IMPORTED_LOCATION "${SDL2_TTF_LIB_DIR}/libSDL2_ttf.dll.a")



set(SDL2_LIBS mingw32 SDL2 SDL2main SDL2_GFX SDL2_TTF_DLL SDL2_IMAGE_DLL m dinput8 dxguid dxerr8 user32 gdi32 winmm imm32 ole32 oleaut32 shell32 version uuid)
set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "${CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS} -std=c++11 ${SDL2_FLAGS}")
file(GLOB_RECURSE SOURCE "src/*.c" "src/*.h")


IF(WIN32)
    SET(GUI_TYPE WIN32)
ENDIF(WIN32)
IF (APPLE)
    SET(GUI_TYPE MACOSX_BUNDLE)
ENDIF (APPLE)

add_executable("${PROJECT_NAME}" ${GUI_TYPE} "${SOURCE}")

include_directories(${SDL2_INCLUDE_DIR} ${SDL2_GFX_INCLUDE_DIR} ${SDL2_IMAGE_INCLUDE_DIR} ${SDL2_TTF_INCLUDE_DIR})
target_link_libraries(${PROJECT_NAME} ${SDL2_LIBS})

Using SDL2 with SDL2_image on OSX 10.11 (CMake 3.3 within CLion 1.1)

I feel stupid... My CMakeLists.txt file is correct except i needed to add the following

target_link_libraries(Cavestory ${SDL2_LIBRARY} ${SDL2_IMAGE_LIBRARY})

instead of

target_link_libraries(Cavestory SDL2 SDL2_image)

This fixes the SDL linking issue from SDL_image.h; However, after updating to El Capitan, I can no longer reference SDL via #include "SDL2/SDL.h" and must use #include "SDL.h" -- while this is preferred, I'd like to know why/how this changed between OSX 10.10 and OSX 10.11.

How to build SDL_Image from FetchContent?

There are two problems with your CMake file:

GIT_TAG release-2.0.5

If you look at the SDL_Image repo at that tag, there's no CMakeLists.txt file. That is indeed the most recent tag, though. But fortunately, according to the docs you can use a git SHA for GIT_TAG. With the most recent git SHA at the time of writing, that would look like this:

GIT_TAG 97405e74e952f51b16c315ed5715b6b9de5a8a50

The other error is that SDL2_image-static doesn't exist. You need to change that in your set(SDL_LIBRARIES ...) line to just SDL2_image.

With those two changes, I'm able to #include SDL_Image.h.

How to link SDL2 in CMake?

To link a library (shared/static) in cmake you can use the target_link_libraries command:

target_link_libraries(<target> ... <item>... ...)

According to the documentation:

<target> must have been created by a command such as add_executable() or add_library()

So first of all we need to find the SDL library, for that we will use the command:

find_package(SDL2 REQUIRED)

to make it's include directories available to you, use the command:

include_directories(${SDL2_INCLUDE_DIRS})

And finally to link SDL2, you need to do:

target_link_libraries(${PROJECT_NAME} ${SDL2_LIBRARIES})

or alternatively:

target_link_libraries(${PROJECT_NAME} PRIVATE SDL2::SDL2)

PRIVATE, means that ${PROJECT_NAME} uses SDL2 in its implementation, but SDL2 is not used in any part of ${PROJECT_NAME}'s public API. More here

Here ${PROJECT_NAME} is the <target>, and all the rest that follow are names of libraries.

Final Result

    # Set the minimum version of CMake that can be used
    # To find the cmake version run
    # $ cmake --version
    cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.5)

    # Set the project name
    project (sdl)

    find_package(SDL2 REQUIRED)

    # Create a sources variable with a link to all cpp files to compile
    set(SOURCES
        src/main.cpp
    )

    # Add an executable with the above sources
    add_executable(${PROJECT_NAME} ${SOURCES})

    target_link_libraries(sdl ${SDL2_LIBRARIES})

    # Set the directories that should be included in the build command for this target
    include_directories(SDL2Test ${SDL2_INCLUDE_DIRS})

Refs:

1. https://cmake.org/cmake/help/latest/command
   
2. https://cmake.org/pipermail/cmake/2016-May/063400.html

Building SDL2_image as a CMake external project

Looks like you need to link some libraries like m and dl. It can be fixed by providing
custom sdl2-config file. Copy sdl2-config from extracted archive and substitute --libs result:

--libs)
  echo -L${exec_prefix}/lib -Wl,-rpath,${libdir} -pthread -lSDL2 -lm -ldl
  ;;

Note that order is important (that's why just modifying LIBS not works for me).
Now this file can be used in your ExternalProject_Add command instead of SDL2_CONFIG=${SDL2_BIN}/sdl2-config:

...
... CFLAGS=-I${SDL2_SRC}/include SDL2_CONFIG=${CMAKE_CURRENT_LIST_DIR}/sdl2-config <SOURCE_DIR>/configure
...

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