SPspeps·Dec 16, 2023
Found about this through the release of SDL 3: https://github.com/libsdl-org/SDL/blob/main/build-scripts/SD...
In Semantic Patching in C with Coccinellelibsdl-org
SDL
C2021–2026
libsdl-org / SDL
SDL
Simple DirectMedia Layer
49Distinct people
59Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
17KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Simple DirectMedia Layer
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 8:03:49 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year59 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2021-05-08 20:35:58 UTC to 2026-10-27 12:02:25 UTC.
* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 8 | 0 | 8 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 7 | 2 | 5 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 7 | 1 | 6 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 14 | 4 | 10 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 9 | 4 | 5 |
| 2026 (partial) | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 14 | 6 | 8 |
What Hacker News says
7 sourcesIf that app ran in a 640x480 mode, memory accesses would be just as fast as the VGA applications 25 years ago, correct?
I do think there's a lot more going on than that. Here's SDL's current pixel access code:
https://github.com/libsdl-org/SDL/blob/main/src/video/SDL_su...
To do a pixel read there's at least a lock, memcpy, format conversion and an unlock.
In BBC Basic returns on multiple platforms, open sourced> It'd be neat if we could build binaries capable of both static and dynamic linking. Everything would be baked in statically, but you'd have the ability to override static links with system dynamic links at application launch.
SDL works like that: https://github.com/libsdl-org/SDL/blob/main/docs/README-dyna...
In Response to “Developers are lazy, thus Flatpak”You can actually override the SDL version at runtime, even if it is statically linked, though they still suggest to link dynamically: https://github.com/libsdl-org/SDL/blob/main/docs/README-dyna...
In How to create portable Linux binariesI've personally shipped some small cross-platform games for win+macos+linux, and it's rather trivial to produce the statically-linked versions for windows and macos even from within Linux.
When the experience you encounter attempting the same thing for the linux build is an actively developer-hostile environment the moment you attempt to shove -static in your LDFLAGS and --static in your pkg-config flags, the message seems rather loud and clear: "We don't want you easily shipping standalone proprietary binaries on our systems avoiding learning and using our package management machinery!"
It's rather desirable to hand out standalone executables for such simple isolated programs as games.
Your claim that games don't statically link when possible strikes me as rather odd. It's such a common practice that SDL added an escape hatch to divert
Read the rest
SDL calls to another libSDL at runtime [0]. Because sometimes you want a newer SDL to fix/support some newfangled stuff, and not be stuck with the statically linked version. Do you really think the SDL devs would bother with such a thing if it weren't a common practice?
[0] https://github.com/libsdl-org/SDL/blob/release-2.26.2/src/dy...
Hmm... Looks like sdl2-config is deprecated and will be removed for SDL3: https://github.com/libsdl-org/SDL/issues/6140
In SDL2 common mistakes and how to avoid them