windows_sdl_native.md

SDL2 for native Windows

If you already have Go and SDL2 installed in WSL2 and they are working, please ignore this guide.

1. You should already have Go (native windows) https://golang.org/dl/ installed on your machine.

2. Download mingw-w64 here.

3. Open installer, Select x86_64 (AMD64) as Architecture, and leave the rest as default.

4. The default destination folder should be C:\Program Files\mingw-w64\x86_64-8.1.0-posix-seh-rt_v6-rev0, we will take this path as example.

5. Search advanced system settings , click on Environment Variables, in System variables list, double click on Path.

6. Add a new variable C:\Program Files\mingw-w64\x86_64-8.1.0-posix-seh-rt_v6-rev0\mingw64\bin.

   (if you already have Haskell installed on your machine, you probably need to move the newly added variables to the top of the list using Move Up button)

7. To confirm, open a new PowerShell and type (gcm gcc).path, make sure the path is the same as above.

8. Download SDL2 https://www.libsdl.org/download-2.0.php, move on to Development Libraries Windowsand download SDL2-devel-2.x.xx-mingw.tar.gz(MinGW 32/64-bit).(make sure you are downloading Development Libraries for MinGW and not for Visual C++)

9. Unzip it and open x86_64-w64-mingw32, copy these four folders bin include lib share to

   C:\Program Files\mingw-w64\x86_64-8.1.0-posix-seh-rt_v6-rev0\mingw64\

   as well as

   C:\Program Files\mingw-w64\x86_64-8.1.0-posix-seh-rt_v6-rev0\mingw64\x86_64-w64-mingw32

   (You should copy those four folders to both of the path above)

10. Open your coursework folder, start a terminal and type go run .

    The system will download dependency packages according to go.sum and go.mod. This usually takes a few minutes for cgo to prepare for the first run.

    If you see the followings showing up in the terminal, you are ready for the coursework.

    Threads: 8
    Width: 512
    Height: 512
    Completed Turns 0       Quitting