package

github.com/mswieboda/sdl3.cr

0.52.1 / published Jul 9, 2026 / repository

Simple DirectMedia Layer bindings (SDL3)

SDL3

SDL3 bindings for crystal

Installation

(Ideally in the future, maybe i make a script to do this that gets ran during shards install for each platform macOS, Windows, Linux and keeps SDL3 and external libs inside the lib folder, abstracted away from the dev user's operating system, but for now you'll need to do it manually.)

Install SDL3 and other external libs SDL3_tty, SDL3_image

(You can see the exact versions in the shard.yml file in this repo)

macOS

brew install sdl3 sdl3_image sdl3_ttf

linux

most likely follow this user created Gist guide: https://gist.github.com/NoxFly/1067c9fc24024d26b51a6825de5cff74

or see the SDL3 wiki Linux instructions, if they update it later but right now it just looks like dependencies, not instructions

windows

(instructions TBD, will add later)

SDL3_mixer installation

you'll also need to separately install / unzip SDL3_Mixer(release)

currently only from the Github releases, hopefully package managers will pick it up when it's out of prerelease

  1. unzip it to a local folder like ~/ext_libs
  2. modify ~/.zshrc or bash shell to include it to some env vars:
# SDL3_mixer manual installation
export C_INCLUDE_PATH="$HOME/ext_libs/sdl3_mixer/include:$C_INCLUDE_PATH"
export LIBRARY_PATH="$HOME/ext_libs/sdl3_mixer/lib:$LIBRARY_PATH"
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="$HOME/ext_libs/sdl3_mixer/lib/pkgconfig:$PKG_CONFIG_PATH"
export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH="$HOME/ext_libs/sdl3_mixer/lib:$DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH"
  1. tweak sdl3.cr Makefile

since I added the --link-flags in the sdl3.cr Makefile, you'll want to tweak:

SDL3_MIXER_LIB_DIR := /Users/matt/ext_libs/sdl3_mixer/lib

so it lines up with where you unzipped SDL3_mixer

Install Shards

  1. Add the dependency to your shard.yml:

    dependencies:
  sdl3:
    github: mswieboda/sdl3.cr

  2. Run shards install

Usage

require "sdl3"

NOTE

These bindings are work in progress, but mostly complete, definitely enough to use.

But it should always be in working order, so the latest can be used in crystal to access SDL3

Contributing

  1. Fork it (https://github.com/your-github-user/sdl3/fork)
  2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
  3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
  4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
  5. Create a new Pull Request

Contributors

API