Haskell SDL Bindings on Windows

I recently wanted to get the Haskell SDK bindings running on windows. It was a bit trickier than I thought it would be — mostly due to a terrible macro SDL used to redefine the main() function. I used the SDL 1.2 bindings as they’re a little more mature than the SDL 2 bindings, which are pretty much brand new. Here is how I got things working:

1. Install the Haskell Platform

Download and run the installer from the Haskell website.

2. Get the msys Base Environment

Download mingw-get-setup.exe from the MinGW website and run it. You should only have to select the msys-base meta-package (which will install several other packages). Then from the menu, select “Installation” -> “Apply Changes” and press the “Apply” button to download and install. Once the changes are applied, you can close the installer.

Take a note of the install path, it’s usually C:\MinGW unless you change it. We’ll call this the mingw-install-path (even though we’re only installing msys).

3. Get SDL Development Libraries

Download the SDL-1.2 Win32 mingw32 development libraries from the SDL website (they’re usually at the bottom). Extract them to some directory. We’ll call this the SDL-install-path

In the extracted directory there should be a file: bin/sdl_config. Open it in a text editor. There should be a: prefix=/usr/local/cross-tools/i686-w64-mingw32. Replace it with your SDL-install-path, but make sure you replace all the backslashes in the path with for slashes, and remove the colons. So if your SDL-install-path was:
C:\Developer\SDL-1.2.15 you’d put /c/Developer/SDL-1.2.15.

If your SDL-install-path has spaces in it, you lose two nerd points and should go move it to a path without spaces.

Then, add the directory containing sdl_config to your path, and add SDL-install-path\lib to your path.

4. Install SDL Haskell Bindings

Run: mingw-install-path\msys\1.0\msys.bat, (which will probably be: C:\MinGW\msys\1.0\msys.bat). This should open a shell window.

In the shell window, type: cabal update. If this is a fresh Haskell platform install you’ll probably be prompted to update cabal-install. DON’T.

Then type: cabal install sdl —-extra-include-dirs=SDL-install-path/include —-extra-lib-dirs=SDL-install-path/lib. For example: cabal install sdl —-extra-include-dirs=/c/Developer/SDL-1.2.15/include —-extra-lib-dirs=/c/Developer/SDL-1.2.15/lib.

5. Get SDL_Image Development Libraries

Download SDLimage windows development libraries here: libsdl.org/projects/SDLimage/release-1.2.html. They’ll be named something like: SDL_image-devel-1.2.12-VC.zip.

Extract it to a directory. We’ll refer to this directory as SDL_image-install-path

Take SDL_Image.h from SDL_image-install-path/include and copy it to SDL-install-path/include/SDL. Then take everything in SDL_image-install-path/lib/x86 and copy it to SDL-install-path/lib. Note the x86 in the above path, don’t copy the wrong one.

Once we get everything working, you can delete the SDL_image-install-path as we’ve copied everything we need out of it.

6. Installing SDL-image Haskell Bindings

In a directory of your choice (but from the msys shell) do a cabal unpack SDL-image. This will download and unpack the SDL-image package from hackage.

Open SDL-image-0.6.1\Graphics\UI\SDL\Image\Version.hsc in an editor. Underneath #include “SDL_image.h” add:

#ifdef main  
#undef main  
#endif  

From the msys shell cd into the unpacked SDL-image directory and run: cabal install --extra-include-dirs=/c/Developer/SDL-1.2.15/include/SDL --extra-lib-dirs=/c/Developer/SDL-1.2.15/lib. (Note that this is slightly different command from the SDL cabal install, though it looks similar.)

7. Building a Template SDL Haskell Project

Now if you want, you can switch back to a normal windows cmd shell. In a directory of your choosing do a git clone https://github.com/Manticore/haskell-sdl-template. Then cd into that directory and do:

• cabal install –only-dependencies
• cabal configure
• cabal build

Copy image.png to dist\build\Resources (you’ll have to create the Resources dir), and run dist\build\sdltemplate\sdltemplate.exe.

Ta da!