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cgccmingwsdl

Can't install SDL on MinGW, getting `undefined reference to WinMain@16`

I'm trying to install SDL on MinGW.

I've downloaded SDL from here (the SDL2-devel-2.0.0-mingw.tar.gz link), then copied the contents of SDL2-2.0.0/x86_64-w64-mingw32/{bin,include,lib} into the matching directories in my MinGW installation.

When I try to compile any file that contains #include ‹SDL2/SDL.h› using gcc test.c -lmingw32 -lSDL2main -lSDL2 -mwindows, GCC complains about undefined reference to WinMain@16 and undefined reference to some SDL functions.

Solution

  • SDL2-devel-2.0.0-mingw.tar.gz contains both 32-bit libraries (i686-w64-mingw32 directory) and 64-bit libraries (x86_64-w64-mingw32 directory).

    The error was caused by using a 64-bit version of the library with a 32-bit compiler.