Setup SDL2_image for CLion using CMake

Setup SDL2_image for CLION using CMAKE

Guide for setting up SDL2_image for CLION using CMAKE

Since setting up SDL2_IMAGE is very similar to setting up SDL2, most of this guide will be very similar to the setup SDL2 for CLION guide.

Open your project and set the default toolchain (found in settings) to the bundled mingw that comes with CLion.

Create a cmake/modules directory in your project root.

Put the following cmake file in the newly created cmake/modules directory

Download the SDL2_image development library for mingw from https://github.com/libsdl-org/SDL_image/releases/. After downloading, unzip the folder in your project root directory.

Add the following above the add_executable statement in your CMakeLists.txt

    set(SDL2_IMAGE_PATH "SDL2_image-2.6.2\\x86_64-w64-mingw32") 
    find_package(SDL2_image REQUIRED) 
    include_directories(${SDL2_IMAGE_INCLUDE_DIRS})

Then link the SDL2_image libraries by putting the following line after the add_executable statement

    # Link SDL2 and SDL2_image 
    target_link_libraries(breakout ${SDL2_LIBRARY} ${SDL2_IMAGE_LIBRARIES})

Note: The code snippet above also links the SDL2_LIBRARY which is part of the base SDL2 library.

Finally, your CMakeLists.txt should look like this, where breakout is the name of your project.

    cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.23) 
    project(breakout) 
    set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD 23) 
    set(CMAKE_MODULE_PATH ${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}/cmake/modules) 
    
    # SDL2 Guide @ https://blog.ahmadz.ai/sdl2-for-clion-and-cmake/ 
    set(SDL2_PATH "SDL2-2.26.0\\x86_64-w64-mingw32") 
    find_package(SDL2 REQUIRED) 
    include_directories(${SDL2_INCLUDE_DIR})
     
    # SDL2_image 
    set(SDL2_IMAGE_PATH "SDL2_image-2.6.2\\x86_64-w64-mingw32") 
    find_package(SDL2_image REQUIRED) 
    include_directories(${SDL2_IMAGE_INCLUDE_DIRS}) 
    add_executable(breakout main.cpp) 
    
    # Link SDL2 and SDL2_image 
    target_link_libraries(breakout ${SDL2_LIBRARY} ${SDL2_IMAGE_LIBRARIES})

That should be it, try using the #include <SDL_image.h> statement in your source code, everything should work.