Use the Visual Studio batch files (located in the VisualC folder) to conveniently generate solutions for Visual Studio 2008, 2010, and 2012. It also contains a cleaner script and a convenient script for automatically running all the test suites. There is a script (check.bin.compatibility.vs2010.bat) in VisualC\build-scripts which will build <sdl_root>\VisualC (which is not generated by this premake system) and build SDL2.dll using the generated SDL2.sln in the VS2010 folder. It will copy the SDL2.dll over to each test project in <sdl_root>\VisualC and subsequently run those tests to verify binary compatibility between the SDL2.dll that came from the premake solution and the executables which were built using the old solution files. The windows project currently depends on most of the libraries inherently added to the links list by Visual Studio. The additional libraries SDL2 depends on are as follows: -imm32 -oleaut32 -winmm -version -OpenGL32 -DirectX OpenGL32 is an optional dependency. If it is not located for whatever reason, SDL2 will build fine without it. DirectX is another optional dependency for SDL2. Unlike the manually-created VS projects, the meta-build system supports not having DirectX support and still being able to build and run through most of the projects (using the OpenGL renderer or the software renderer). Run the clean script to clear out the directory of VS-related files and binaries. Ben: Please note that the script for building the VS2012 solution from the command prompt seems to not be working properly. This issue is currently unresolved.