Building SDL 3 | saoe: The Nifty Oddity

Building SDL 3

Posted 2025-06-12

The Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL) recently released its version 3 (not as 3.0, and not as 3.1, but as 3.2, for some reason).

That may be a good oppurtunity for me to check it out and play a bit with it; but before that, it needs to be built first.
More info can be found in the SDL CMake ReadMe, but these essential steps here should be enough for a start:

Download the source code for the latest stable release.
Extract the downloaded archive file (for example to C:\temp\SDL-3.2.14).

Configure (prepare) the buildsystem:

 C:\temp\SDL-3.2.14> cmake -S . -B .\_build

Trigger the build process:

 C:\temp\SDL-3.2.14> cmake --build .\_build --config RelWithDebInfo

Install the built artifacts to its destination directory:

 C:\temp\SDL-3.2.14> cmake --install .\_build --config RelWithDebInfo --prefix C:\install\to\SDL\3.2.14

Done!

Feedback: comment@saoe.net · Categories: Development, How To · Tags: EN, SDL, Visual Studio, Windows, CMake

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