How do I build sdl2 with meson?

Question

Using this meson file,

project('mytest', 'c')
cc = meson.get_compiler('c')

deps = []
deps += dependency('sdl2',
  required: true,
  static: true,
  method: 'pkg-config')


executable('demo', 
           'src/main.c', 
           dependencies : deps,
           gui_app: true)

I get the following error

 error LNK2019: unresolved external symbol WinMain referenced in function "int __cdecl invoke_main(void)" (?invoke_main@@YAHXZ)

This seems to be related to the SDLmain.lib (I'm sure it exist).
How would you force the linker to link to this library?

I'm on windows 10, using the MSVC compiler.

Did you link against `SDLmain.lib`? – HolyBlackCat Oct 31 '21 at 09:01 — HolyBlackCat, Oct 31 '21 at 09:01
No ! How do you do so? `dependency` doesn't seems to work. – gberth Oct 31 '21 at 17:05 — gberth, Oct 31 '21 at 17:05

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 31 '21 at 05:39

You're building a gui app, not a terminal app. With MSVC, when you set gui_app : true (or in more recent versions of meson win_subsystem : 'windows') you don't provide a main function, you provide WinMain function instead.

See the MSDN documentation

Under the hood this option is passing /SUBSYSTEM:WINDOWS to the compiler

How do I build sdl2 with meson?

1 Answers1