How to link SDL2 manually in CMake

Question

Recently I have started to learn CMake. To practice, I am trying to link SDL2 manually. I know that there is another way around using find_file which is easy. But I want to do it myself for practice.

I get an error when I try to link the libSDL2main.a file (running the Makefile using cmd mingw32-make)

[ 50%] Linking CXX executable exe0.exe
c:/mingw/bin/../lib/gcc/mingw32/8.2.0/../../../../mingw32/bin/ld.exe: cannot find -llibSDL2main
collect2.exe: error: ld returned 1 exit status
CMakeFiles\exe0.dir\build.make:105: recipe for target 'exe0.exe' failed
mingw32-make[2]: *** [exe0.exe] Error 1
CMakeFiles\Makefile2:94: recipe for target 'CMakeFiles/exe0.dir/all' failed
mingw32-make[1]: *** [CMakeFiles/exe0.dir/all] Error 2
Makefile:102: recipe for target 'all' failed
mingw32-make: *** [all] Error 2

Here is my CMakeLists.txt

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.10)
project(SDL_Test_Project)
include_directories(include)
add_executable(exe0 main.cpp)
target_link_libraries(exe0 libSDL2main.a)

Here main.cpp is only a source file. I have put SDL2.dll and libSDL2main.a into the root of the project directory. (I used the CMake GUI to generate the Makefile in Windows 10).

squareskittles squareskittles · Accepted Answer · 2020-05-02T15:13:19

If you want to link to the SDL2 libraries directly in target_link_libraries() (without defining IMPORTED targets, or using find_library()), use the full path to each library. The CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR variable provides the full path to the root directory of the CMake project:

target_link_libraries(exe0 PRIVATE 
    mingw32 
    ${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}/libSDL2main.a
    ${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}/SDL2.dll
)

Note, for SLD2, you may also have to add the mingw32 to this command when using MinGW for compilation.

How to link SDL2 manually in CMake

1 Answers