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# Installing PySDL2

This section provides an overview and guidance for installing PySDL2 on various target platforms.

## Getting the sources

You can download the official releases of PySDL2 from https://bitbucket.org/marcusva/py-sdl2/downloads. Download the most recent release, unpack it and make sure that you installed the relevant prerequisites before continuing with the installation.

## Prerequisites

PySDL2 relies on some 3rd party packages to be fully usable and to provide you full access to all of its features.

You must have at least one of the following Python versions installed:

- Python 2.7, 3.2+ (http://www.python.org)
- PyPy 1.8.0+ (http://www.pypy.org)

Other Python versions or Python implementations might work, but are (currently) not officially tested or supported by the PySDL2 distribution.

You need to have a working SDL2 library on your target system. You can obtain the source code (to build it yourself) or a prebuilt version at http://www.libsdl.org.

PySDL2 also offers support for the following SDL-related libraries:

- SDL2_image (http://www.libsdl.org/projects/SDL_image/)
- SDL2_mixer (http://www.libsdl.org/projects/SDL_mixer/)
- SDL2_ttf (http://www.libsdl.org/projects/SDL_ttf/)
- SDL2_gfx (http://www.ferzkopp.net/Software/SDL_gfx-2.0/)

Those are optional though and only necessary, if you want to use `sdl2.sdlimage`, `sdl2.sdlmixer`, `sdl2.sdlttf` or `sdl2.sdlgfx`.

## Installation

You can either use the python way of installing the package or the make command using the Makefile on POSIX-compatible platforms, such as Linux or BSD, or the make.bat batch file on Windows platforms.

Simply type

    python setup.py install

for the traditional python way or

    make install

for using the Makefile or make.bat. Both will try to perform a default installation with as many features as possible.

### Trying out

You also can test out PySDL2 without actually installing it. You just need to set up your `PYTHONPATH` to point to the location of the source distribution package. On Windows-based platforms, you might use something like

    set PYTHONPATH=C:\path\to\pysdl2\:$PYTHONPATH

to define the `PYTHONPATH` on a command shell. On Linux/Unix, use

    export PYTHONPATH=/path/to/pysdl2:$PYTHONPATH

for bourne shell compatibles or

    setenv PYTHONPATH /path/to/pysdl2:$PYTHONPATH

for C shell compatibles. You can omit the :$PYTHONPATH`, if you did not use it so far and if your environment settings do not define it.

Note

If you are using IronPython, use `IRONPYTHONPATH` instead of `PYTHONPATH`.

Note

If you did not install SDL2 using the preferred way for your operation system, please read the information about Importing in the section Integrating PySDL2.

### Notes on Mercurial usage

The Mercurial version of PySDL2 is not intended to be used in a production environment. Interfaces may change from one checkin to another, methods, classes or modules can be broken and so on. If you want more reliable code, please refer to the official releases.

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