I'm struggling to understand how to run cmake on windows to clone a project that uses SDL2

Usage
1

This is my first time using cmake, I cloned a project form github on my linux Virtual boxes, and ran the appropriate commands and it worked wonderfully.

Problem is, when I try to use Visual studio on windows, everything goes south.

I first clone the repo:

https://github.com/JacobEckroth/BetterChess.git:

and then mkdir a build folder, cd into it and input cmake .
I get this error:

name@DESKTOP-G8CSCPT MINGW64 ~/source/repos/BetterChess/build (main)
$ cmake …
– Building for: Visual Studio 17 2022
– Selecting Windows SDK version 10.0.19041.0 to target Windows 10.0.19042.
– The C compiler identification is MSVC 19.31.31104.0
– The CXX compiler identification is MSVC 19.31.31104.0
– Detecting C compiler ABI info
– Detecting C compiler ABI info - done
– Check for working C compiler: C:/Program Files/Microsoft Visual Studio/2022/Professional/VC/Tools/MSVC/14.31.31103/bin/Hostx64/x64/cl.exe - skipped
– Detecting C compile features
– Detecting C compile features - done
– Detecting CXX compiler ABI info
– Detecting CXX compiler ABI info - done
– Check for working CXX compiler: C:/Program Files/Microsoft Visual Studio/2022/Professional/VC/Tools/MSVC/14.31.31103/bin/Hostx64/x64/cl.exe - skipped
– Detecting CXX compile features
– Detecting CXX compile features - done
CMake Error at C:/Users/name/cmake-3.23.0-windows-x86_64/cmake-3.23.0-windows-x86_64/share/cmake-3.23/Modules/FindPackageHandleStandardArgs.cmake:230 (message):
Could NOT find SDL2 (missing: SDL2_LIBRARY SDL2_INCLUDE_DIR)
Call Stack (most recent call first):
C:/Users/name/cmake-3.23.0-windows-x86_64/cmake-3.23.0-windows-x86_64/share/cmake-3.23/Modules/FindPackageHandleStandardArgs.cmake:594 (_FPHSA_FAILURE_MESSAGE)
cmake/FindSDL2.cmake:313 (FIND_PACKAGE_HANDLE_STANDARD_ARGS)
CMakeLists.txt:4 (find_package)

– Configuring incomplete, errors occurred!
See also “C:/Users/name/source/repos/BetterChess/build/CMakeFiles/CMakeOutput.log”.
See also “C:/Users/name/source/repos/BetterChess/build/CMakeFiles/CMakeError.log”.

How do I fix this?, I have SDL2 in my machine, and able to use it vs and make projects with it, but when cloning repos, It doesn’t work.

2

image

Here is an image of the gui version of the errror.

3

You probably have to help CMake find SDL2 if it isn’t in a “typical” location. SDL2_PATH looks promising; can you try setting it to the SDL2 installation prefix? If that doesn’t work, making a new SDL2_ROOT variable with that value may work better.