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General / Abandoned SFML because of the install process
« on: January 09, 2021, 10:09:29 am »
I'll probably get flamed for this - but here goes. I wanted to take a quick look at SFML to see if it was suitable for a small project I'm contemplating. But there is no pre-built SFML for Visual Studio 2019 and the VS project created by cmake-gui just doesn't work. It defaults to X64, which isn't what I want and it doesn't seem to want to change. The Install sub-project fails on some complex statement, probably because paths aren't right. I managed to compile a demo program but linking failed with all sorts of missing symbols, even when I explicitly included the SFML libraries with a #pragma. So I lost the will to live and have abandoned my evaluation of SFML and will go look at other platform independent tools.
I'm sure that if I persisted for a couple of days and got lots of help from this forum I could make it work. But that's not the point. There ought to be an easy path to getting your first working SFML app, and that doesn't seem to be the case. IMHO this will deter people from looking at what might well be an excellent piece of technology. So can I suggest that there ought to be a simple installation process that works with the latest Visual Studio release using something idiot-proof like MSI. Complex and inadequately-documented build processes are fine when you have lots of time and need fine control over configurations, but they deter beginners.
I'm sure people will argue that the problem is my lack of commitment or knowledge about the finer details of cmake. But that's missing the point. I know C++ very well, and I don't want to have to become an expert on cmake for Windows just to find out if a technology is useful or not. IMHO SFML installation fails the key principle defined by the great Alan Kay: simple things should be simple and complex things should be possible.
I'm sure that if I persisted for a couple of days and got lots of help from this forum I could make it work. But that's not the point. There ought to be an easy path to getting your first working SFML app, and that doesn't seem to be the case. IMHO this will deter people from looking at what might well be an excellent piece of technology. So can I suggest that there ought to be a simple installation process that works with the latest Visual Studio release using something idiot-proof like MSI. Complex and inadequately-documented build processes are fine when you have lots of time and need fine control over configurations, but they deter beginners.
I'm sure people will argue that the problem is my lack of commitment or knowledge about the finer details of cmake. But that's missing the point. I know C++ very well, and I don't want to have to become an expert on cmake for Windows just to find out if a technology is useful or not. IMHO SFML installation fails the key principle defined by the great Alan Kay: simple things should be simple and complex things should be possible.