================================================================================ 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 ================================================================================ * Input events from the keyboard leak through to the console