PySDL2 is a pure Python wrapper around the SDL2, SDL2_mixer, SDL2_image, SDL2_ttf, and SDL2_gfx libraries. Instead of relying on C code, it uses the built-in ctypes module to interface with SDL2, and provides simple Python classes and wrappers for common SDL2 functionality.
PySDL2 is easy to install and integrate within your own projects. To install or update to the latest version, simply run one of the following commands in a terminal:
# Install latest stable version from PyPI
pip install -U pysdl2
# Install latest development verion from GitHub
pip install -U git+https://github.com/py-sdl/py-sdl2.git
Note: If installing on Python 3 on a computer where both Python 2 and 3
are installed, replace pip
with pip3
in the above commands.
In order for PySDL2 to work, the binaries for SDL2 (and any SDL2 addon modules
you wish to use, e.g. SDL2_mixer) need to be installed on your system. On
macOS, Windows, and most x86 and ARM64 distributions of Linux, the recommended
way to install the SDL2 binaries is via the pysdl2-dll
package using pip:
pip install pysdl2-dll
This will install pre-built binaries for all supported SDL2 libraries as
a Python package, which PySDL2 will automatically load if available.
On systems not supported by pysdl2-dll
, you can install the SDL2 binaries using
your system's package manager (which may be out of date), or alternatively
build and install the latest versions yourself from source.
The current minimum supported versions for each library are listed below:
- SDL2 >= 2.0.5
- SDL2_mixer >= 2.0.1 (for the
sdl2.sdlmixer
module) - SDL2_ttf >= 2.0.14 (for the
sdl2.sdlttf
module) - SDL2_image >= 2.0.1 (for the
sdl2.sdlimage
module) - SDL2_gfx >= 1.0.3 (for the
sdl2.sdlgfx
module)
If you just started with SDL and PySDL2, it is strongly recommended
that you read through the tutorial of the documentation to learn the
basics. You can find the documentation at doc/html
or online at
http://pysdl2.readthedocs.org.
This library is given to the public domain. There are no licensing
restrictions. Please see doc/copying.rst
for further details.