Is it possible to remove the linker flag `-mwindows` in MinGW?

I'm using CMake & MinGW and I DON'T think the linker flag -mwindows is useful at all for me and it has made me too inconvenient to develop console apps. I cannot use the stdout functions such as printf and puts because of this flag. Hope to remove it.

[madebr]

The CMake script of current master only adds -mwindows fot the sdl2.pc pkg-config file.
Neither -mwindows and -lmingw32 are needed anymore since 5ec2d46.
So can you try with current master?

For reference, the last lines of configuration with mingw64 look like:

--  CFLAGS:         -idirafter "/home/maarten/programming/SDL/src/video/khronos"
--  EXTRA_CFLAGS:   -Wall -fno-strict-aliasing -Werror=declaration-after-statement -Wdeclaration-after-statement -fvisibility=hidden -Wshadow -fdiagnostics-color=always -mmmx -m3dnow -msse -msse2 -msse3
--  EXTRA_LDFLAGS:  -Wl,--no-undefined
--  EXTRA_LIBS:    m;iconv;user32;gdi32;winmm;imm32;ole32;oleaut32;version;uuid;advapi32;setupapi;shell32;dinput8
-- 
--  Build Shared Library: ON
--  Build Static Library: ON
--  Build Static Library with Position Independent Code: OFF
-- 
-- Configuring done

Currently, sdl2.pc generated by CMake contains -mwindows though.

[madebr]

I went ahead and removed the -mwindows from the generated sdl2.pc in d211aad.
Adding -mwindows should be a decision made by a project, not by us.

[sezero]

autotools side needs a similar change, doesn't it?

[sezero]

Also: The sdl2-config script needs a similar change.

[slouken]

Removing -mwindows will break all the applications which depend on it - any application which isn't a console application, e.g. all games, etc. Please revert this change. If someone specifically wants to build a console application with SDL, they can use their own link flags with their build.

If you want to add an option to disable that, that's fine, but we shouldn't change the default which has been in place for decades.

[madebr]

Reverted in fc2497b
CMake adds -mwindows again to the sdl2.pc.

CMake projects will need to explicitly add WIN32 to switch between WinMain/main.

[slouken]

If there's an elegant way to parameterize that in the pkg-config / sdl-config / CMake cases, I'm totally fine with that, we just can't change the default.

[madebr]

I just compared with 2.0.22 and pkg-config/sdl-config behave the same.

Only CMake does not add -mwindows to the SDL2 targets.

I argue this is fine because not everybody wants to build a WinMain application every time.
Always adding -mwindows would also make SDL_MAIN_HANDLED more useless because the main function will not be the entry function, and they would need a wrapper anyways.
Another argument is the only fix applications need to work is the following:

@@ CMakeLists.txt @@
-add_executable(mygame
+add_executable(mygame WIN32

The game will remain compatible with current and previous SDL versions. It will even be correcter.
Also, WIN32 will need to be added anyways when they want their game to be buildable by MSVC.

[slouken]

Okay, that's fine, as long as we document the requirement for CMake applications on Windows.

[madebr]

I will edit http://wiki.libsdl.org/Installation a bit.
It still displays CMake as experimental.

[madebr]

See libsdl-org/sdlwiki#243

[icculus]

libsdl-org/sdlwiki#243 is merged, is that enough to resolve this issue?

[madebr]

For SDL3, we currently only add -mwindows in sdl3.pc.
Current sdl3.pc looks like:

# sdl pkg-config source file

prefix=${pcfiledir}/../..
exec_prefix=${prefix}
libdir=${prefix}/lib
includedir=${prefix}/include

Name: sdl3
Description: Simple DirectMedia Layer is a cross-platform multimedia library designed to provide low level access to audio, keyboard, mouse, joystick, 3D hardware via OpenGL, and 2D video framebuffer.
Version: 3.0.0
Requires.private: 
Conflicts:
Libs: -L${libdir}  -lSDL3 -mwindows 
Libs.private: -luser32 -lgdi32 -lwinmm -limm32 -lole32 -loleaut32 -lversion -luuid -ladvapi32 -lsetupapi -lshell32 -ldinput8
Cflags: -I${includedir} -I${includedir}/SDL3 

I think now would be an ideal time to remove -mwindows.
Then, when building a Windows application, by default a console application will be built and only by manually adding -mwindows will a gui application be built.
This is equivalent to cmake, which will build a console application by default (add_executable(app app.c)), and will only build a gui application by passing WIN32 (add_executable(app WIN32 app.c))

CC'ing @DanielGibson because he got rid of SDL3_main