Using SDL2 with CMake: Addressing Invalid Header Includes

When integrating SDL2 into a project using CLion and CMake, developers may encounter difficulties with including necessary headers due to unsuccessful header path resolution. This article aims to address this issue and provide a comprehensive solution.

In the provided CMakeLists.txt file, the path to the SDL2 include directory and libraries is explicitly set:

set(SDL2_INCLUDE_DIR C:/SDL/SDL2-2.0.3/include)
set(SDL2_LIBRARY C:/SDL/SDL2-2.0.3/lib/x64)

However, this approach relies on the assumption that the specified paths are correct and that the system's header search paths are properly configured.

To resolve this issue, we recommend using the find_package() command provided by CMake. This command will automatically search for the SDL2 library and set appropriate variables, including SDL2_INCLUDE_DIRS and SDL2_LIBRARIES.

For Linux-based systems with recent CMake versions (e.g., 3.7 or later), this process should be straightforward:

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.7)
project(SDL2Test)

find_package(SDL2 REQUIRED)

For Windows systems, it is necessary to manually create a sdl-config.cmake file within the extracted SDL2 development package directory. Here is an example of the file's contents:

set(SDL2_INCLUDE_DIRS "${CMAKE_CURRENT_LIST_DIR}/include")

# Support both 32 and 64 bit builds
if (${CMAKE_SIZEOF_VOID_P} MATCHES 8)
  set(SDL2_LIBRARIES "${CMAKE_CURRENT_LIST_DIR}/lib/x64/SDL2.lib;${CMAKE_CURRENT_LIST_DIR}/lib/x64/SDL2main.lib")
else ()
  set(SDL2_LIBRARIES "${CMAKE_CURRENT_LIST_DIR}/lib/x86/SDL2.lib;${CMAKE_CURRENT_LIST_DIR}/lib/x86/SDL2main.lib")
endif ()

string(STRIP "${SDL2_LIBRARIES}" SDL2_LIBRARIES)

Upon configuring the project within the CMake-GUI application, the SDL2_DIR variable will appear. It should be set to the SDL2 directory extracted from the dev package. After this step, the reconfigured project should correctly find the necessary headers and libraries, allowing for the seamless inclusion of SDL2 headers using the familiar syntax:

#include 
#include "SDL.h"