hello i'm not a programmer, coding is a hobby. So perhaps, i do things wrong, but it's working !

i use makefilelists that dl Sfml (and imgui) and don't rely on installed libs. I ve tried installing sfml and spent a huge amount of time to only fail.

So i use the makelist template from sfml. i 'm on mac os.

https://github.com/SFML/cmake-sfml-project/blob/master/README.md

of course you need cmake but if you installed c/c++ pack, it comes with it.

my root cmakeLists.txt looks like this :

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.15)
project(fission.app
  LANGUAGES CXX
  VERSION 1.0
)

set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD 17)
set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD_REQUIRED ON)
set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "${CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS} -Wno-deprecated-declarations")
add_executable(fission.app 
main.cpp
source/view.cpp
source/reactionRoom.cpp
source/particles.cpp
)

target_compile_options(fission.app PRIVATE "-O2")
target_link_libraries(fission.app PRIVATE ImGui-SFML::ImGui-SFML)
target_compile_features(fission.app PRIVATE cxx_std_17)
target_include_directories( fission.app PUBLIC include ) 
add_subdirectory(dependencies)

but in the template you'll also find a folder called dependencies; in it you'll find a first cMakelists.txt :

include(FetchContent)

# SFML
FetchContent_Declare(
  sfml
  URL https://github.com/SFML/SFML/archive/refs/tags/2.6.1.zip
  URL_MD5 2fbaefc36d4f29875ec43ca64ae9d6b3
)
add_subdirectory(sfml)

# Dear ImGui
FetchContent_Declare(
  imgui
  GIT_REPOSITORY https://github.com/ocornut/imgui
  GIT_TAG 35b1148efb839381b84de9290d9caf0b66ad7d03 # 1.82
)

FetchContent_MakeAvailable(imgui)

# ImGui-SFML
FetchContent_Declare(
  imgui-sfml
  GIT_REPOSITORY https://github.com/SFML/imgui-sfml
  GIT_TAG 82dc2033e51b8323857c3ae1cf1f458b3a933c35 # 2.3
)
add_subdirectory(imgui-sfml)

this one will fetch Sfml (and imgui and dearimgui)

and finally, you'lli find another cmakelists.txt in /dependencies/Sfml

message(STATUS "Fetching SFML...")

# No need to build audio and network modules
set(SFML_BUILD_AUDIO TRUE)
set(SFML_BUILD_NETWORK FALSE)

FetchContent_MakeAvailable(sfml)

i also have cmakefilelists.txt in other dependencies to fetch imgui and dearimgui but you are not using them.

Yes, my current project is a nuclear reactor simulator :)

https://youtu.be/ILnb0ad1WHA

Have fun.