Can SFML run on PCs without having it installed?

[Niely]

Hello

I tried to run my SFML applications on other Linux distributions, but it didn't worked because SFML wasn't found.
But, it's a compiled program.

Does this mean SFML can only run on computers who have SFML installed?
Or can it run even on computers without having it installed? Because it's compiled?

Thanks for reading,
Niely

[Nexus]

You can run your applications on computers that don't have SFML. But in this case, you need to ship the SFML libraries along with your executable. (I would do this in any case, unless you like users to configure and download libraries before playing the game... Well, on Linux the philosophy may be a bit different in this respect.)

If you download my game Zloxx II for Linux, you'll see how I've done it: the dynamic .so libraries are in a directory relative to the executable. I used the -rpath linker option, some people also write a script that sets the LD_LIBRARY_PATH and calls the executable.

Alternatively, you can try to link SFML statically, but it's generally discouraged on Linux systems.

See also:
http://en.sfml-dev.org/forums/index.php?topic=11092
http://en.sfml-dev.org/forums/index.php?topic=17456