Quickstart

Read on to get up-and-running with Allegro quickly.

It's assumed that you already have some knowledge of C or C++, and have a compiler installed - if not, see Learning C and C++.

Installation

Installing Allegro as a binary package is the easiest method for most operating systems.

Choose your weapon:

Linux

Ubuntu 18.04+ (or derivatives thereof)

sudo apt install liballegro*5.2 liballegro*5-dev

Fedora

sudo dnf install allegro5*

Others

Binary packages may be available for your distro; feel free to add them here if so.

Otherwise, select "Something else" below.

macOS

Install with Homebrew

brew install allegro

Windows

Visual Studio 2015+

Install per-project using NuGet in PowerShell:

cd MyProjectDir\
Install-Package Allegro

Or, just install from within Visual Studio.

MinGW

• Download Allegro 5.2.4 for MinGW.
  • Note that Allegro 5.2.4 is the latest release at the time of writing; make sure you check the releases page.
• Extract the relevant directories into your MinGW install's include & library paths:
  • Find out where you installed MinGW (C:\MinGW is the default).
  • The .zip contains three directories under allegro\: bin\ include\ lib\.
  • Extract the files from each to eg. C:\MinGW\bin, C:\MinGW\include, C:\MinGW\lib respectively.

Mobile (Android / iOS)

Using Allegro for mobile apps is a bit trickier. We recommend building a desktop program first.

Android

See the Maven repository.

iOS

See the iOS README.

TODO: Adapt from this.

Something else

Install from source

If you're running another OS or want to do something that's not possible with the provided binary packages (eg. static linking often isn't trivial with them), you'll need to build Allegro from source.

If you're having problems installing, refer to the in-depth instructions.

Hello World

Once you've installed Allegro, you can check that it compiles into a simple program.

The program will just display the above window and exit when any key is pressed.

Create hello.c with the below code:

View source

#include <allegro5/allegro5.h>
#include <allegro5/allegro_font.h>

int main()
{
    al_init();
    al_install_keyboard();

    ALLEGRO_TIMER* timer = al_create_timer(1.0 / 30.0);
    ALLEGRO_EVENT_QUEUE* queue = al_create_event_queue();
    ALLEGRO_DISPLAY* disp = al_create_display(320, 200);
    ALLEGRO_FONT* font = al_create_builtin_font();

    al_register_event_source(queue, al_get_keyboard_event_source());
    al_register_event_source(queue, al_get_timer_event_source(timer));

    bool redraw = true;
    ALLEGRO_EVENT event;

    al_start_timer(timer);
    while(1)
    {
        al_wait_for_event(queue, &event);

        if(event.type == ALLEGRO_EVENT_TIMER)
            redraw = true;
        else if((event.type == ALLEGRO_EVENT_KEY_DOWN) || (event.type == ALLEGRO_EVENT_DISPLAY_CLOSE))
            break;

        if(redraw && al_is_event_queue_empty(queue))
        {
            al_clear_to_color(al_map_rgb(0, 0, 0));
            al_draw_text(font, al_map_rgb(255, 255, 255), 0, 0, 0, "Hello world!");
            al_flip_display();

            redraw = false;
        }
    }

    al_destroy_font(font);
    al_destroy_display(disp);
    al_destroy_timer(timer);
    al_destroy_event_queue(queue);

    return 0;
}

Compile and run

Linux / macOS / Windows (MinGW)

gcc hello.c -o hello $(pkg-config allegro-5 allegro_font-5 --libs --cflags)
./hello

Windows (Visual Studio)

Configure Allegro for your project and then simply compile and run as normal.

What next?

Congratulations - you've got a working program! (hopefully.)

Next, read Allegro Vivace for a proper tutorial.

Or, dive straight into the reference manual.