[](https://opensource.org/licenses/Zlib)
[](https://ci.appveyor.com/project/Lokathor/fermium/branch/master)
[](https://travis-ci.org/Lokathor/fermium)
[](https://crates.io/crates/fermium)
[](https://docs.rs/fermium/)
# fermium
The `fermium` crate is raw bindings to the SDL2 C API. For the "high-level
wrapper" crate, please see [beryllium](https://github.com/Lokathor/beryllium).
Currently this targets `SDL2-2.0.12`.
It uses a bundled copy of SDL2 on Windows, and the system version on Mac/Linux.
The bindings are not generated at compile time, and you do not need to have
`bindgen` or any of its dependencies installed. Instead, bindings files have
been pre-generated for select common build targets (and I'm happy to accept PRs
for more!).
* By default the `dynamic_link` feature is active.
* If you'd like to do a static link then you can disable default features and
enable the `static_link` feature.
* If _both_ link modes are selected then the crate will refuse to build, so only
select one or the other.
* Yes, this does mean that those two features are not "purely additive" like how
cargo features are supposed to be. However, this is a truly "one or the other"
decision, and cargo has no support for such a thing right now. Don't blame me,
blame cargo.
## Platforms Supported
On **Windows MSVC**, this crate will "just work" all on its own. The necessary
files are packaged into the crate and you don't need to do anything special.
Windows is the platform for video games, so naturally gamedev library developers
should make sure that gamedev libraries have top quality support on Windows.
They absolutely _shouldn't_ require you to get files and unpack them yourselves
into a bunch of special directories and then use a custom build script, that
would obviously just be a terrible user experience.
On **Mac** or **Linux** you'll need to already have SDL2 installed via your
method of choice. Homebrew or apt-get or pacman or whatever other thing. It's
been tested with Mac/Homebrew and Debian/apt-get. The location of the files
varies from system to system, but the `build.rs` will do its best to guess. If
it doesn't build on your flavor of Linux send in a PR.
This does not work with iOS, Android, or Emscripten. Mostly because I don't know
anything about setting up those dev environments at all. PRs accepted if you
want to throw stuff my way.
## Versioning Explanation
SDL2 as a library doesn't follow semver, so this crate can't quite follow semver
either.
* With standard SemVer, a version is given as `major.minor.patch`
* With SDL2, a version is basically `2.major.minor`
* Also, starting with `2.0.10`, even minor versions are "release" and odd
minor versions are "dev", similar to how the Linux kernel works.
* They update the final value when there's new functions or improvements to
old functions. In this case, there's no actual ABI breaks to any part of the
library. Sometimes hints or other constants get added and removed, but they
explicitly _don't_ consider such a small thing to be a breaking change even if it does mean you have to edit your source a tiny bit.
* _Not that there ever has been_, but if there _were_ to be an ABI break to the
library, then they would update the major version.
To try and make the `fermium` version indicate the SDL2 version that it's trying
to bind to, while also trying to play nice with cargo's semver expectations,
we'll have a major version of `200` to represent the `2.0.` part of things, and
then we'll set the minor version to be the SDL2 minor version (such as `12`),
and then we'll use patch releases if we need to put out an update in between
when SDL2 does releases.
## Project Logo
[](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermium)