SFML is a C++ GUI library used to create multimedia quick developed by the SFML team. This installation guide is mainly for Visual Studios Code but should also work for other text editors or IDE's. To set this up and begin your project, see the instructions below.
- NOTE: The mingw64 version that comes with the installation has SFML imports, use the given mingw64 version instead of your current version for SFML-only projects, otherwise import other libraries are required.
- SFML-2.5.1 is currently the latest stable release of SFML
clone this GitHub repo into a folder
git clone https://github.com/epicnuss55/SFML-Installation-Guide.git
Enter SFML Template folder and navigate to the mingw64 folder, move it into your C drive (or a different place you know that you're not going to move it), then enter the mingw64 folder and navigate to mingw64 >> bin and copy the path. Proceed to press the windows key search up and open your system environment.
On the newly opened System Properties window, press Environment Variables, then, in the new window, under System variables, find the Path variable and press Edit. Finally press the New button in the new Window and paste the path to the mingw64/bin folder you had. OK your way out of the system environment.
Open SFML_Template (optional: and rename the folder) and open the folder as a project in Visual Studio Code or any other preferred text editor, open the main.cpp file, compile and run the template code to make sure everything is working correctly (see compiling instructions below).
To compile your project, open up a command prompt line on the terminal of your text editor (or use command prompt). Then open the type in the following command gcc -c main.cpp or gcc -c *.cpp if you have multiple C++ files. Finally gcc main.o -o main -lsfml-graphics -lsfml-window -lsfml-system or gcc *.o -o main -lsfml-graphics -lsfml-window -lsfml-system if you have multiple object files.