sdl2

Both high- and low-level bindings to the SDL library (version 2.0.6+).

LTS Haskell 24.16:2.5.5.1
Stackage Nightly 2025-10-24:2.5.5.1
Latest on Hackage:2.5.5.1

See all snapshots sdl2 appears in

BSD-3-Clause licensed by Gabríel Arthúr Pétursson, Oliver Charles
Maintained by [email protected], [email protected]
This version can be pinned in stack with:sdl2-2.5.5.1@sha256:7e2c55ca0ec4b538351fd3cceb71dbc5f99893dd326a7db78efa4adecc43c086,12150

Module documentation for 2.5.5.1

Used by 5 packages in nightly-2025-10-24(full list with versions):
LambdaHack, sdl2-gfx, sdl2-image, sdl2-mixer, sdl2-ttf

This package contains bindings to the SDL 2 library, in both high- and low-level forms:

The SDL namespace contains high-level bindings, where enumerations are split into sum types, and we perform automatic error-checking.

The SDL.Raw namespace contains an almost 1-1 translation of the C API into Haskell FFI calls. As such, this does not contain sum types nor error checking. Thus this namespace is suitable for building your own abstraction over SDL, but is not recommended for day-to-day programming.

Read SDL for a getting started guide.

Changes

2.5.X.Y

2.5.5.1

  • Added getTicks64
  • Added rendererIntegerScale
  • Added unboxed Vector instances for Rectangle
  • Updated dependency ranges

2.5.5.0

  • Added windowOpacity property
  • Added renderGeometry and renderGeometryRaw
    • Requires SDL 2.0.18
    • See examples/RenderGeometry.hs
  • Changed SDL.Input.GameController bindings to be more high-level
    • ControllerAxisEventData type changed

2.5.4.0

  • Added missing floating point variants of render functions.
  • Fixed createCursor masks.
  • Adapted createCursorFrom helper from LambdaHack1.
  • Added pkgconfig flag (enabled by default) to make its use optional.

2.5.3.3

  • Alignment in hsc files is now provided by hsc2c.

2.5.3.2

  • Added high-level binding for setWindowIcon.
  • Raised text upper bound to 2.0.
  • Fixed and optimized even polling for SDL 2.0.20.
  • copyExF and related are under a package flag now. Turn on recent-ish if you have at least 2.0.10.
  • Removed misleading result type from updateTexture.

2.5.3.1

  • Constructors exported for ModalLocation, SurfacePixelFormat, AudioSpec.
  • Added getWindowBordersSize.
  • Added SDL.Input.Mouse.createSystemCursor.

2.5.3.0

  • Correct the Storable instance for SDL.Raw.Types.Event to correctly convert SDL_CONTROLLERAXISMOTION to a ControllerAxisEvent (it was previously ControllerButtonEvent). See https://github.com/haskell-game/sdl2/pull/218 for more details.

2.5.2.0

2.5.1.0

  • Support linear-1.21

2.5.0.0

  • Version 2.0.6 of the SDL2 C library is now required.

  • Added Vulkan support. See SDL.Video.WindowGraphicsContext data type and SDL.Video.Vulkan module.

  • Support StateVar < 1.3

2.4.1.0

2.4.0.1

  • Raise upper bounds for exceptions to <0.11

2.4.0

  • getRelativeMouseLocation now returns Vector instead of Point.
  • getModalMouseLocation returns either a Vector or a Point, wrapped in (new) ModalLocation.
  • WindowSizeChangedEventData includes the new window size.
  • Added an invalid state to the ControllerButtonState enum, and switched to a more reliable state detection method.
  • Raise upper bounds for exceptions to <0.10

2.3.0

  • Windows builds now use -D_SDL_main_h. See https://github.com/haskell-game/sdl2/issues/139 for more discussion.
  • Some basic support for game controller events have been added. See SDL.Input.GameController and changes to ControllerDeviceEventData.
  • Support for event watching: addEventWatch and delEventWatch.
  • High-level bindings now distinguish between finger down / motion / up. See SDL.Event.TouchFingerEvent and SDL.Event.TouchFingerMotionEvent.
  • Several event payloads now have their Window fields modified to use Maybe Window, substituting Nothing for null pointers.
  • High-level structure for controller button state: ControllerButtonState.
  • High-level structure for controller buttons: ControllerButton.
  • High-level structure for controller connection: ControllerDeviceConnection.
  • High-level structure for joystick device connection: JoyDeviceConnection.
  • High-level structure for joystick button state: JoyButtonState.
  • Support for user defined events: registerEvent, pushRegisteredEvent, and getRegisteredEvent.
  • Initial window visibility can be specified in WindowConfig for createWindow function.
  • WarpMouseOrigin is now fully exported and can warp to global coordinates.
  • It’s possible to retrieve palette information with paletteNColors, paletteColors and palletColor.

2.2.0

  • Version 2.0.4 of the SDL2 C library is now required:

    • SDL.Event:
      • Add AudioDeviceEvent constructor to Event
      • Add KeymapChangedEvent constructor to EventPayload
      • Add mouseWheelEventDirection field to MouseWheelEventData
    • SDL.Input.Mouse:
      • Add MouseScrollDirection enumeration
    • SDL.Raw.Audio:
      • Add clearQueuedAudio function
      • Add getQueuedAudioSize function
      • Add queueAudio function
    • SDL.Raw.Enum:
      • Add SDL_GL_CONTEXT_RELEASE_BEHAVIOR pattern synonym
      • Add JoystickPowerLevel pattern synonyms
      • Add SDL_MOUSEWHEEL_NORMAL and SDL_MOUSEWHEEL_FLIPPED pattern synonyms
      • Add SDL_KEYMAPCHANGED, SDL_AUDIODEVICEADDED, SDL_AUDIODEVICEREMOVED, SDL_RENDER_TARGETS_RESET, and SDL_RENDER_DEVICE_RESET pattern synonyms
      • Add SDL_GL_CONTEXT_RELEASE_BEHAVIOR_NONE and SDL_GL_CONTEXT_RELEASE_BEHAVIOR_FLUSH pattern synonyms
      • Add SDL_WINDOW_MOUSE_CAPTURE pattern synonym
    • SDL.Raw.Event:
      • Add captureMouse function
      • Add getGlobalMouseState function
      • Add warpMouseGlobal function
      • Add joystickCurrentPowerLevel function
      • Add joystickFromInstanceID function
      • Add gameControllerFromInstanceID function
    • SDL.Raw.Event:
      • Add AudioDeviceEvent constructor to Event
      • Add KeymapChangedEvent constructor to Event
      • Add mouseWheelEventDirection field to MouseMotionEvent constructor

  • Add SDL.Exception module, exposing SDLException

  • Add new function, createSoftwareRenderer, to render onto a surface

  • Add joystick POV hat support

  • Remove deprecated functionality:

    • InitEverything enumeration in SDL.Init
    • mapRGB in SDL.Video.Renderer
    • setRelativeMouseMode in SDL.Input.Mouse
    • getRelativeMouseMode in SDL.Input.Mouse
    • getMouseLocation in SDL.Input.Mouse

  • Remove ClipboardUpdateEventData

  • Merge isScreenSaverEnabled, enableScreenSaver, and disableScreenSaver into a screenSaverEnabled StateVar.

  • Make function surfaceBlit in SDL.Video.Renderer return final blit rectangle post-clipping.

  • Make all fields in EventData constructors strict

  • Fix issue with setWindowMode transitions not working properly between fullscreen and windowed modes.

2.1.3.1

  • Raise upper bounds for vector to <0.13

2.1.3

  • Cabal flag no-linear removes dependency on linear (and thus, transiently, lens). See SDL.Vect for details.
  • Remove ‘lens’ dependency from all examples.
  • Add Cabal flag opengl-example to separate that target from examples, because it is now the only example with an extra dependency (OpenGL).
  • Make hlint happy with examples.
  • Add updateTexture wrapper for native SDL_UpdateTexture.
  • Expose glGetDrawableSize (can differ from window size in some environments).
  • Correct hintToString output to match SDL hint tokens, rather than the names of the CPP macros defining them.
  • Removed ghc-options: -Wall until we drop support for GHC 7.8. (>1300 warnings!)
  • Various documentation updates.

2.1.2.1

  • Raise upper bounds for lens to <4.15 (affects examples only)

2.1.2

  • Revise some documentation examples to be more idomatic
  • Update .gitignore to cover stack and other tools
  • Raise upper bounds for transformers to <0.6
  • Lower required SDL2 version to 2.0.2.
  • Fix decoding of TextEditingEvent where the Raw bindings failed to stop reading character data past the null terminator.

2.1.1

  • SDL.Input.Mouse new has a new API for fetching the location of the mouse. This API gives you greater control over finding the mouse position with respect to the various “modes” a mouse can be in. The old API still exists, but will be removed at some point in the future.
  • SDL.Raw now has a binding to SDL_free.

2.1.0

  • Introduce initializeAll and deprecate InitEverything. To fix this deprecation warning, change initialize [InitEverything] to initializeAll.
  • surfaceColorKey, surfaceFillRect and surfaceFillRects now all operate on on RGBA V4 Word8 values. They all implicitly map and unmap (using SDL_MapRGBA and SDL_GetRGBA respectively).
  • SDL.mapRGB is now deprecated, as this conversion is always done for you. If you still need this routine, use SDL.Raw.mapRGB.
  • Fix a runtime crash when reading the current BlendMode of a texture. Thanks to @seppeljordan for discovering and fixing this bug.

2.0.0

  • Introduce a set of comprehensive high-level bindings to SDL. These bindings should allow users to work with SDL while writing idiomatic Haskell code. They take care of pointer manipulation, and wrap up values in much more “natural” data types. The high-level bindings live in the SDL namespace, and have been extensively documented.
  • Raw bindings have been moved from Graphics.UI.SDL to SDL.Raw.

1.3.1

  • Correct type signature of getSurfaceBlendMode

1.3.0

  • Use pattern synonyms exclusively
    • Graphics.UI.SDL.Enum.Pattern overrides Graphics.UI.SDL.Enum
  • Generalize all IO functions over MonadIO
  • Add convenience wrapper functions for constructing FunPtr callbacks
  • Add Typeable instances to all type classes
  • Add strictness annotations to all data structure fields
  • Add missing SDLK_AUDIOPREV enumeration
  • Correct deserialization of SDL_TEXTINPUT event
    • Data beyond the null terminator was returned previously

1.2.0

  • Add support for pattern synonyms as an alternative for SDL enumerations
    • Only present when compiling with GHC 7.8 or newer
  • Add missing enumerations:
    • keymodShift, keymodCtrl, keymodAlt, keymodGUI
    • keyPressend, keyReleased
    • toucheMouseID
  • Specialize init flags over InitFlag, a Word32
  • Generalize keymod* enumerations over Num
    • The C API is inconsistent on their types
  • Fix foreign imports on Graphics.UI.SDL.Thread
  • Correct type signature of getRenderDrawBlendMode
  • Correct type signature of queryTexture
  • Remove export of Keycode from Graphics.UI.SDL.Types
    • Graphics.UI.SDL.Enum already exports Keycode

1.1.3

  • Add missing Keycode enumerations
  • Add missing enumerations:
    • audioAllowFrequencyChange, audioAllowFormatChange
    • audioAllowChannelsChange, audioAllowAnyChange

1.1.2

  • Add ClipboardUpdateEvent to Event data structure
  • Add UnknownEvent to Event data structure

1.1.1

  • Add Graphics.UI.SDL.Platform module
  • Add Graphics.UI.SDL.Thread module and associated types and enumerations
  • Add getWindowWMInfo
  • Add setError
  • Add additional logging functions

1.1.0

  • Require SDL 2.0.3
    • Add gameControllerAddMappingsFromFile
    • Add gameControllerAddMappingsFromRW
    • Add glResetAttributes
    • Add mouseButtonEventClicks field to WindowEvent
  • Add missing mouse button enumerations

1.0.2

  • Correct type signature of getNumTouchFingers

1.0.1

  • Factor type of addHintCallback and delHintCallback into HintCallback
  • Add Version data structure