Bindings for SDL2 in Rust

Rust-SDL2 is a library for talking to the new SDL2.0 libraries from Rust. Low-level C components are wrapped in Rust code to make them more idiomatic and abstract away inappropriate manual memory management.

Rust-SDL2 uses the MIT license.

If you want a library compatible with earlier versions of SDL, please see here

• master documentation
• crates.io documentation

We currently target the latest stable release of Rust.

Install these through your favourite package management tool, or via https://www.libsdl.org/

Ubuntu example:

sudo apt-get install libsdl2-dev

Fedora example:

sudo dnf install SDL2-devel

You might also need a C compiler (gcc).

On OSX, it's a good idea to install these via homebrew.

brew install sdl2

Then add the following to your ~/.bash_profile if not already present.

export LIBRARY_PATH="$LIBRARY_PATH:/usr/local/lib"

You can also get sdl2 via macports.

sudo port install libsdl2

Then add the following to your ~/.bash_profile if not already present.

export LIBRARY_PATH="$LIBRARY_PATH:/opt/local/lib/"

If you're having issues with either homebrew or macports, see here.

You can download and install the SDL2 Mac OS X framework from: https://www.libsdl.org/download-2.0.php

To make the sdl2 crate link with the SDL2 framework, you will need to enable the use_mac_framework feature. To build and test the sdl2 crate with this feature, use:

cargo test --features use_mac_framework

To depend on the sdl2 crate with this feature enabled, put the following in your project's Cargo.toml file:

[dependencies.sdl2]
features = ["use_mac_framework"]
version = ...  # Whichever version you are using

Alternatively, you can re-export the feature in your package by putting the following in your Cargo.toml file:

[features]
default = []
use_sdl2_mac_framework = ["sdl2/use_mac_framework"]

1. Download mingw and msvc development libraries from https://www.libsdl.org/ (SDL2-devel-2.0.x-mingw.tar.gz & SDL2-devel-2.0.x-VC.zip).
2. Unpack to folders of your choosing (You can delete it afterwards).
3. Create the following folder structure in the same folder as your Cargo.toml:

gnu-mingw\dll\32
gnu-mingw\dll\64
gnu-mingw\lib\32
gnu-mingw\lib\64
msvc\dll\32
msvc\dll\64
msvc\lib\32
msvc\lib\64

4. Copy the lib and dll files from the source archive to the directories we created in step 3 like so:

SDL2-devel-2.0.x-mingw.tar.gz\SDL2-2.0.x\i686-w64-mingw32\bin 		-> 	gnu-mingw\dll\32
SDL2-devel-2.0.x-mingw.tar.gz\SDL2-2.0.x\x86_64-w64-mingw32\bin 	-> 	gnu-mingw\dll\64
SDL2-devel-2.0.x-mingw.tar.gz\SDL2-2.0.x\i686-w64-mingw32\lib 		-> 	gnu-mingw\lib\32
SDL2-devel-2.0.x-mingw.tar.gz\SDL2-2.0.x\x86_64-w64-mingw32\lib 	-> 	gnu-mingw\lib\64
SDL2-devel-2.0.5-VC.zip\SDL2-2.0.x\lib\x86\*.dll	 		-> 	msvc\dll\32
SDL2-devel-2.0.5-VC.zip\SDL2-2.0.x\lib\x64\*.dll 			-> 	msvc\dll\64
SDL2-devel-2.0.5-VC.zip\SDL2-2.0.x\lib\x86\*.lib	 		-> 	msvc\lib\32
SDL2-devel-2.0.5-VC.zip\SDL2-2.0.x\lib\x64\*.lib	 		-> 	msvc\lib\64

5. Create a build script, if you don't already have one put this in your Cargo.toml under [package]:

build = "build.rs"

6. Create a file in the same directory as Cargo.toml called build.rs (if you didn't already have a build script) and paste this into it:

use std::env;
use std::path::PathBuf;

fn main() {
    let target = env::var("TARGET").unwrap();
    let manifest_dir = PathBuf::from(env::var("CARGO_MANIFEST_DIR").unwrap());
    let mut lib_dir = manifest_dir.clone();
    let mut dll_dir = manifest_dir.clone();
    if target == "x86_64-pc-windows-msvc" {
        lib_dir.push("msvc");
        lib_dir.push("lib");
        lib_dir.push("64");
        dll_dir.push("msvc");
        dll_dir.push("dll");
        dll_dir.push("64");
    }
    else if target == "x86_64-pc-windows-gnu" {
        lib_dir.push("gnu-mingw");
        lib_dir.push("lib");
        lib_dir.push("64");
        dll_dir.push("gnu-mingw");
        dll_dir.push("dll");
        dll_dir.push("64");
    }
    else if target == "i686-pc-windows-msvc" {
        lib_dir.push("msvc");
        lib_dir.push("lib");
        lib_dir.push("32");
        dll_dir.push("msvc");
        dll_dir.push("dll");
        dll_dir.push("32");
    }
    else if target == "i686-pc-windows-gnu" {
        lib_dir.push("gnu-mingw");
        lib_dir.push("lib");
        lib_dir.push("32");
        dll_dir.push("gnu-mingw");
        dll_dir.push("dll");
        dll_dir.push("32");
    }
    if target.contains("pc-windows") {
        println!("cargo:rustc-link-search=all={}", lib_dir.display());
        for entry in std::fs::read_dir(dll_dir).expect("Can't read DLL dir")  {
            let entry_path = entry.expect("Invalid fs entry").path();
            let file_name_result = entry_path.file_name();
            let mut new_file_path = manifest_dir.clone();
            if let Some(file_name) = file_name_result {
                new_file_path.push(file_name.to_str().unwrap());
                std::fs::copy(&entry_path, new_file_path.as_path()).expect("Can't copy from DLL dir");
            }
        }
    }
}

7. On build the build script will copy the needed DLLs into the same directory as your Cargo.toml, you probably don't want to commit these to any Git repositories though so add the following line to your .gitignore file

/*.dll

8. When you're shipping your game make sure to copy the corresponding SDL2.dll to the same directory that your compiled exe is in, otherwise the game won't launch.

And now your project should build and run on any Windows computer!

1. Download mingw development libraries from https://www.libsdl.org/ (SDL2-devel-2.0.x-mingw.tar.gz).

2. Unpack to a folder of your choosing (You can delete it afterwards).

3. Copy all lib files from

   SDL2-devel-2.0.x-mingw\SDL2-2.0.x\x86_64-w64-mingw32\lib

   to (for Rust 1.6 and above)

   C:\Program Files\Rust\lib\rustlib\x86_64-pc-windows-gnu\lib

   or to (for Rust versions 1.5 and below)

   C:\Program Files\Rust\bin\rustlib\x86_64-pc-windows-gnu\lib

   or to your library folder of choice, and ensure you have a system environment variable of

   LIBRARY_PATH = C:\your\rust\library\folder

   For Rustup users, this folder will be in

   C:\Users\{Your Username}.multirust\toolchains\{current toolchain}\lib\rustlib\{current toolchain}\lib

Where current toolchain is likely stable-x86_64-pc-windows-gnu.

4. Copy SDL2.dll from

   SDL2-devel-2.0.x-mingw\SDL2-2.0.x\x86_64-w64-mingw32\bin

   into your cargo project, right next to your Cargo.toml.

5. When you're shipping your game make sure to copy SDL2.dll to the same directory that your compiled exe is in, otherwise the game won't launch.

1. Download MSVC development libraries from https://www.libsdl.org/ (SDL2-devel-2.0.x-VC.zip).

2. Unpack SDL2-devel-2.0.x-VC.zip to a folder of your choosing (You can delete it afterwards).

3. Copy all lib files from

   SDL2-devel-2.0.x-VC\SDL2-2.0.x\lib\x64\

   to (for Rust 1.6 and above)

   C:\Program Files\Rust\lib\rustlib\x86_64-pc-windows-msvc\lib

   or to (for Rust versions 1.5 and below)

   C:\Program Files\Rust\bin\rustlib\x86_64-pc-windows-msvc\lib

   or to your library folder of choice, and ensure you have a system environment variable of

   LIB = C:\your\rust\library\folder

   For Rustup users, this folder will be in

   C:\Users\{Your Username}.multirust\toolchains\{current toolchain}\lib\rustlib\{current toolchain}\lib

Where current toolchain is likely stable-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc.

4. Copy SDL2.dll from

   SDL2-devel-2.0.x-VC\SDL2-2.0.x\lib\x64\

   into your cargo project, right next to your Cargo.toml.

5. When you're shipping your game make sure to copy SDL2.dll to the same directory that your compiled exe is in, otherwise the game won't launch.

If you're using cargo to manage your project, you can download through Crates.io:

    [dependencies]
    sdl2 = "0.29"

Alternatively, pull it from GitHub to obtain the latest version from master

    [dependencies.sdl2]
    git = "https://github.com/AngryLawyer/rust-sdl2"

Otherwise, clone this repo and run cargo

cargo build

You can enable features such as ttf, image, gfx and mixer by adding this instead:

    [dependencies.sdl2]
    version = "0.29"
    default-features = false
    features = ["ttf","image","gfx","mixer"]

Those features need their respective libraries, which can be found at these locations : (the install process is the same as SDL2)

• image, ttf, mixer
• gfx

As of now, sdl2_net meaningless compared to what other crates such as serde and bincode can offer. We highly recommend using those to develop anything UDP or TCP realted (along with futures or TCP/UDP from std).

If you still want an implementation of sdl2_net, you can try to add it in this repo as a feature via a Pull Request. A somewhat outdated version of this binding can be found here

We have several simple example projects included:

cargo run --example demo

You can see the full list in the examples/ folder

If you want to use OpenGL, you also need the gl-rs package. If you're using cargo, just add these lines to your Cargo.toml:

    [dependencies.gl]
    git = "https://github.com/bjz/gl-rs"

Then you need to add this initialization code to establish the bindings:

let sdl_context = sdl2::init().unwrap();
let video_subsystem = sdl_context.video().unwrap();

gl::load_with(|name| video_subsystem.gl_get_proc_address(name) as *const _);

Note that these bindings are very raw, and many of the calls will require unsafe blocks.

Rust, and Rust-SDL2, are both still heavily in development, and you may run into teething issues when using this. Before panicking, check that you're using the latest version of both Rust and Cargo, check that you've updated Rust-SDL2 to the latest version, and run cargo clean. If that fails, please let us know on the issue tracker.