Simple DirectMedia Layer - Download

Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL) is a cross-platform, free and open source multimedia library written in C that presents a simple interface to various platforms graphics, sound, and input devices. It is widely used due to its simplicity.

SDL has the word "layer" in its title because it is actually a wrapper around operating-system-specific functions. The main purpose of SDL is to provide a common framework for accessing these functions. For further functionality beyond this goal, many libraries have been created to work on top of SDL.

Software developers use it to write computer games and other multimedia applications that can run on many operating systems: Android, iOS, Linux, Mac OS X, Windows and other platforms. It manages video, events, digital audio, CD-ROM, threads, shared object loading, networking and timers.

SDL acts as a cross-platform wrapper, providing support for 2D pixel operations, sound, file access, event handling, timing and threading. It is often used to complement OpenGL by setting up the graphical output and providing mouse and keyboard input, which are not supported by OpenGL.

The library is divided into several subsystems, namely the video (handles both surface functions and OpenGL), audio, CD-ROM, joystick, and timer subsystems. Besides this basic, low-level support, there also are a few separate official libraries that provide some more functions. These comprise the "standard library", and are provided on the official website and included in the official documentation:

    SDL_image — support for multiple image formats

    SDL_mixer — complex audio functions, mainly for sound mixing

    SDL_net — networking support

    SDL_ttf — TrueType font rendering support

    SDL_rtf — simple Rich Text Format rendering

The syntax of SDL is function-based: all operations done in SDL are done by passing parameters to functions. Special structures are also used to store the specific information SDL needs to handle. There are a few different subsystems SDL categorizes its functions under:

-    The video, events and threads subsystem: this provides functions for video,

     multi-threading, and event handling

-    The audio subsystem: this provides functions for audio

-    The time subsystem

-    The joystick subsystem

-    The CD-ROM subsystem

SDL version 1.2.15 (historic)

Source Code:

What's New
SDL-1.2.15.tar.gz - GPG signed
SDL-1.2.15-1.src.rpm - GPG signed
SDL-1.2.15.zip - GPG signed

Runtime Libraries:

Linux:
SDL-1.2.15-1.i386.rpm
SDL-1.2.15-1.x86_64.rpm

Win32:
SDL-1.2.15-win32.zip
SDL-1.2.15-win32-x64.zip (64-bit Windows)

Mac OS X:
SDL-1.2.15.dmg (Intel 10.5+)
SDL-1.2.15-OSX10.4.dmg (Intel/PPC 10.4)

Development Libraries:

          Linux:
          SDL-devel-1.2.15-1.i386.rpm
          SDL-devel-1.2.15-1.x86_64.rpm

          Win32:
          SDL-devel-1.2.15-VC.zip (Visual C++)
          SDL-devel-1.2.15-mingw32.tar.gz (Mingw32)


SDL version 2.0.1 (stable)

Source Code:

SDL2-2.0.1.zip - GPG signed
SDL2-2.0.1.tar.gz - GPG signed

Runtime Binaries:

Windows:
SDL2-2.0.1-win32-x86.zip (32-bit Windows)
SDL2-2.0.1-win32-x64.zip (64-bit Windows)
Mac OS X:
SDL2-2.0.1.dmg (Intel 10.5+)

Linux:
Please contact your distribution maintainer for updates.

Development Libraries:

Windows:
SDL2-devel-2.0.1-VC.zip (Visual C++ 32/64-bit)
SDL2-devel-2.0.1-mingw.tar.gz (MinGW 32/64-bit)

Mac OS X:
SDL2-2.0.1.dmg (Intel 10.5+)

Linux:
Please contact your distribution maintainer for updates.
iOS & Android:
Projects for these platforms are included with the source