Allegro

Creating a Project That Uses the Allegro Library

In Microsoft Visual Studio 2015/2013 select File -> New Project from the menu. This will open a dialog window for creating a new project. In the left pane select Visual C++, and in the right pane select Empty Project.

Type in the name of the project below (for example AllegroProject) and then click the OK button.

This will create a new empty project.

In the Solution Explorer window, right-click on Source Files, then select Add -> New Item. This will open a dialog box for adding a new file to the project. Select C++ file (.cpp), and then type main as the name of the file. Click the Add button. This will add a source code file to the project.

Now, we need to specify where the header files of Allegro library are located. We know that they are in the directory c:\allegro\include, but our project in the IDE is missing that piece of information. In the Solution Explorer window, right-click on the name of the project (i.e. AllegroProject), then select Properties on the bottom. A Property Pages dialog window will appear. In the Configuration drop-down list (it is on the top) select All Configurations. In the pane on the left, select Configuration Properties, then VC++ Directories. In the pane on the right, select the row Include Directories, and, on the far right of that row, click on the drop-down button, then select Edit. A dialog box will open having 4 buttons on the top. Click on the first button having an icon of the yellow folder on it. On a line that appears type

c:\allegro\include

Click OK, and then click OK again.

That adds the path to Allegro library header files into our project. The next thing we must add to the project is the Allegro library code. The Allegro library for Microsoft Visual C++ has already been compiled, so its object code is in the library object file, having the extension .lib [*]. In the Solution Explorer window, right-click on the name of the project (i.e. AllegroProject), then select Add -> Existing Item. In the File name box on the bottom, type:

c:\allegro\lib\allegro-4.4.2-md.lib

That will make the compiler link the program with the specified library file.