================================================================================ SDL2 for Raspberry Pi ================================================================================ Requirements: Raspbian (other Linux distros may work as well). ================================================================================ Features ================================================================================ * Works without X11 * Hardware accelerated OpenGL ES 2.x * Sound via ALSA * Input (mouse/keyboard/joystick) via EVDEV * Hotplugging of input devices via UDEV ================================================================================ Raspbian Build Dependencies ================================================================================ sudo apt-get install libudev-dev libasound2-dev libdbus-1-dev You also need the VideoCore binary stuff that ships in /opt/vc for EGL and OpenGL ES 2.x, it usually comes pre installed, but in any case: sudo apt-get install libraspberrypi0 libraspberrypi-bin libraspberrypi-dev ================================================================================ Cross compiling from x86 Linux ================================================================================ To cross compile SDL for Raspbian from your desktop machine, you'll need a Raspbian system root and the cross compilation tools. We'll assume these tools will be placed in /opt/rpi-tools sudo git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/raspberrypi/tools /opt/rpi-tools You'll also need a Rasbian binary image. Get it from: http://downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspbian_latest After unzipping, you'll get file with a name like: -wheezy-raspbian.img Let's assume the sysroot will be built in /opt/rpi-sysroot. export SYSROOT=/opt/rpi-sysroot sudo kpartx -a -v .img sudo mount -o loop /dev/mapper/loop0p2 /mnt sudo cp -r /mnt $SYSROOT sudo apt-get install qemu binfmt-support qemu-user-static sudo cp /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static $SYSROOT/usr/bin sudo mount --bind /dev $SYSROOT/dev sudo mount --bind /proc $SYSROOT/proc sudo mount --bind /sys $SYSROOT/sys Now, before chrooting into the ARM sysroot, you'll need to apply a workaround, edit $SYSROOT/etc/ld.so.preload and comment out all lines in it. sudo chroot $SYSROOT apt-get install libudev-dev libasound2-dev libdbus-1-dev libraspberrypi0 libraspberrypi-bin libraspberrypi-dev libx11-dev libxext-dev libxrandr-dev libxcursor-dev libxi-dev libxinerama-dev libxxf86vm-dev libxss-dev exit sudo umount $SYSROOT/dev sudo umount $SYSROOT/proc sudo umount $SYSROOT/sys sudo umount /mnt The final step is compiling SDL itself. export CC="/opt/rpi-tools/arm-bcm2708/gcc-linaro-arm-linux-gnueabihf-raspbian/bin/arm-linux-gnueabihf-gcc --sysroot=$SYSROOT -I$SYSROOT/opt/vc/include -I$SYSROOT/usr/include -I$SYSROOT/opt/vc/include/interface/vcos/pthreads -I$SYSROOT/opt/vc/include/interface/vmcs_host/linux" cd mkdir -p build;cd build ../configure --with-sysroot=$SYSROOT --host=arm-raspberry-linux-gnueabihf --prefix=$PWD/rpi-sdl2-installed --disable-pulseaudio --disable-esd make make install To be able to deploy this to /usr/local in the Raspbian system you need to fix up a few paths: perl -w -pi -e "s#$PWD/rpi-sdl2-installed#/usr/local#g;" ./rpi-sdl2-installed/lib/libSDL2.la ./rpi-sdl2-installed/lib/pkgconfig/sdl2.pc ./rpi-sdl2-installed/bin/sdl2-config ================================================================================ Apps don't work or poor video/audio performance ================================================================================ If you get sound problems, buffer underruns, etc, run "sudo rpi-update" to update the RPi's firmware. Note that doing so will fix these problems, but it will also render the CMA - Dynamic Memory Split functionality useless. Also, by default the Raspbian distro configures the GPU RAM at 64MB, this is too low in general, specially if a 1080p TV is hooked up. See here how to configure this setting: http://elinux.org/RPiconfig Using a fixed gpu_mem=128 is the best option (specially if you updated the firmware, using CMA probably won't work, at least it's the current case). ================================================================================ No input ================================================================================ Make sure you belong to the "input" group. sudo usermod -aG input `whoami` ================================================================================ No HDMI Audio ================================================================================ If you notice that ALSA works but there's no audio over HDMI, try adding: hdmi_drive=2 to your config.txt file and reboot. Reference: http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=5062 ================================================================================ Text Input API support ================================================================================ The Text Input API is supported, with translation of scan codes done via the kernel symbol tables. For this to work, SDL needs access to a valid console. If you notice there's no SDL_TEXTINPUT message being emmited, double check that your app has read access to one of the following: * /proc/self/fd/0 * /dev/tty * /dev/tty[0...6] * /dev/vc/0 * /dev/console This is usually not a problem if you run from the physical terminal (as opposed to running from a pseudo terminal, such as via SSH). If running from a PTS, a quick workaround is to run your app as root or add yourself to the tty group, then re login to the system. sudo usermod -aG tty `whoami` The keyboard layout used by SDL is the same as the one the kernel uses. To configure the layout on Raspbian: sudo dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration To configure the locale, which controls which keys are interpreted as letters, this determining the CAPS LOCK behavior: sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales ================================================================================ Notes ================================================================================ * When launching apps remotely (via SSH), SDL can prevent local keystrokes from leaking into the console only if it has root privileges. Launching apps locally does not suffer from this issue.