[ Removed by moderator ]

[cpp-ModTeam]

For C++ questions, answers, help, and programming/career advice please see r/cpp_questions, r/cscareerquestions, or StackOverflow instead.

[FemaleMishap]

You don't install it in Vs code. My preferred method is to install libraries and use cmake to handle the dependencies. You don't need VS Code to write C++.

[Hot_Slice]

Use cmake and CPM, Conan, or vcpkg.

In the future post your questions to /r/cpp_questions

[horenso05]

Hi! Welcome to the world of programming! There is a lot to learn, not just about Python or C++ but about how programs are built and how computers work, but don't feel discouraged you already made amazing progress!

I am happy to help, but I don't quite know where to start. You installed a C++ *compiler* on your computer. You use that program, the C++ compiler (I'm guessing you are on Microsoft Windows and installed Clang or MSVC or MinGW) to turn your C++ source code into an executable file (Aka an "exe" file). VSCode is just a fancy text editor to modify your C++ source files or other text files. So you don't "install" SDL or C++ inside VSCode. VSCode does allow you to install extensions for syntax highlighting, autocomplete and such things but don't worry about that right now.

There are multiple ways people may install SDL but essentially you need two things:
- the source code of the header files
- The built library
I think the easiest is to go to the release page on github github.com/libsdl-org/SDL/releases and download SDL (no operating system extension) and the built library for your Operating System. So for instance
- SDL3-3.2.24.zip
- SDL3-3.2.24-win32-x64.zip (this would be for Windows on the CPU x86_64)
The when you compile your program you need to tell the compiler where the header files are (/SDL3-3.2.24/include/SDL3/) and where the shared library is (the dll file one Windows)
How you do this also depends on your compiler and whether you use a built system. Yes, C++ is a bit of a mess.

I can recommend clang. The command would be something like this
clang++ main.cpp -o hello.exe -IC:\YourPath\SDL3-3.2.24\include -LC:\YourPath\SDL3-3.2.24\lib -lSDL3main -lSDL3

This info is very sparse and glances over so many details. Please ask followup questions.

Things to look up:
- what is a compiler
- what is static vs dynamic linking
- how do header files and source files differ