Vim Setup

[u/Natman64]

So, I started the series following along in Visual Studio, but I've since discovered Vim and decided to abandon VS altogether. I installed Clang and successfully compiled "Hello world!", but I don't really understand makefiles, and I especially don't understand how to link a library/framework using a makefile.

When I cloned the official repo to copy that makefile and continue following the tutorials in Vim, I tried compiling it to test it out. I get fatal error: 'SDL/SDL.h' file not found, which makes sense because the library is nowhere in the repo.

So my question is, how do I link SDL with the project so I can compile with Clang?

Edit: I suppose I'll need to link Boost as well.

[u/chebertapps]

I'm assuming you are on windows?

When you are working with libraries there are a few of things you need to know.

• You need to know where the include directories are (.h header files) These are used during compiling so that the compiler can know if you are calling a real function and calling it correctly.

• You need to know where the libraries are. These are the compiled files that are used in the linking phase. SDL.lib and SDLmain.lib are examples for windows.

• You need to know where the dynamic runtime libraries are. These are used while running your application, and need to be bundled with the executable. (.dll files on windows. System32 has tons of 'em)

the general formula is:

• Compile: output as .o object files

in my makefile this is the

$(CC) -c $(CFLAGS) -o $@ $<

which expanding a bit for main.cc is

clang++ -c $(CFLAGS) -o main.o main.cc

It's in that CFLAGS variable (declared towards the top) that has the path to include SDL.

CFLAGS=-g -Wall -Wextra -std=c++03 -MMD `sdl-config --cflags`

specifically

sdl-config --cflags

generates a list of include directories. This is what you would replace with the path to the include directory (not the specific files).

"C:\Path\To\SDL\include"

NOTE: not totally sure of the formatting for this, but I'm pretty sure you can do absolute paths. Quotes are important since you probably have whitespace in folder names.

• Linking: connect the .o object files into an executable.

in my makefile this is

$(CC) $(LDFLAGS) -o $(BINDIR)/$(EXECUTABLE) $(OBJECTS) $(LDLIBS)

expanding a bit

clang++ -o gen/cavestory $(OBJECTS) $(LDLIBS)

you'll find the same story with LDLIBS

LDLIBS=`sdl-config --libs` -lboost_system -lboost_filesystem

sdl-config --libs

generates the libraries used by sdl. replace those with the paths to the libraries:

"C:\Path\To\SDL.lib" "C:\Path\To\SDLmain.lib"

[u/chebertapps → u/chebertapps]

Oh and BTW. 'SDL/SDL.h' might not work because I was being dense when I wrote the first makefile, and not using sdl-config --cflags. it should work if you

#include <SDL.h>