Hi, so my hhd crashes and I installed Windows 10 on an SSD now. I was trying really hard to install allegro and failed previously. Before I had alot of silly stuff in my Program files because GTAV installed like 3 extra Windows SDKs and I was not able to properly resolve paths and stuff like that. Was super noob at the time. I am now ready to actually do this. I have got a clean install of Windows and I am going to make this my programming laptop now so less headache. Can someone please volunteer to walk me setting up Allegro so that it actually works. I am ready to accept guidance on everything, need help picking a compiler, and etc. I've got a complete clean slate here.

If I could make a recommendation, as a Windows user and professional Windows app developer...

Get Linux in a virtual machine. (VMWare Player is free. Then you just feed it an Ubuntu ISO and you're up and running.)

Programming is so much more awesome on Linux.

Want Allegro?

Type in a terminal:

sudo apt-get install allegro5

DONE. This won't likely be the newest version, however.

Want the BRAND newest version of Allegro?

Type in a terminal:

 git clone https://github.com/liballeg/allegro5.git

You've now got the source of the most recent Allegro in whatever directory you were in. Now, go in there, cd allegro5 or whatever. Run

./configure
make
make install

configure checks to make sure you have all required system dependencies.
make builds it. (You can use make -j 2 to use two cores, or 4, etc to build faster.) make install installs it into your system folders so you can link to it without it being in your directory.

BOOM. HEADSHOT. Every bug that's been fixed in github, is now fixed on your installation.

Of course, this won't be for everyone. And maybe it won't suit you. But if you've ever been on-the-fence about Linux, I REALLY encourage you to try it while you're at it. I use Ubuntu every day on my netbook, for work and fun, and work on Allegro games. I don't regret learning it at all, and the tools and mindset I've learned from cross-training has helped me solve problems on Window as well.

Aside from the VM, the easiest way to use Allegro on Windows is to install Visual Studio 2017 and then follow this tutorial: https://wiki.allegro.cc/index.php?title=Windows,_Visual_Studio_2015_and_Nuget_Allegro_5

You could also use the MinGW/MSYS based approaches, but they are somewhat more involved. I'd just go with MSVC and move on to the other options once you've got more experience under your belt.

I commend you for that. That said, as somebody that is mostly command line and has also had a professional career in mostly Windows I can say that Windows' command line options are really bad. It's the kind of thing that you cannot easily master, and even if you did, it would still be terrible. But I'm going to assume that you mean you intend to use MinGW/MSYS/MSYS2, not like Visual Studio's command line tools.

I'm a little disappointed though. I thought we had an acceptable answer. And now I'm left scratching my head wondering where to get up-to-date MinGW-based Allegro binaries again...

Append:

Perhaps this is the place to be. Edgar is good people. You can trust him. And it looks like he walks you through getting the right toolchain too. Start with that and update us on where it leaves you.

You have the "standard" include paths that are part of the compiler's configuration and contain standard library headers, etc. And then you can add more directories to the search path using either command line flags^[1][2], or environment variables^[3][4]

I'd say the quickest way to install a working environment of Allegro 5 is to use msys2 (and their version of MinGW). They have a package manager through which you can also many of the dependencies. However, I'll have to admit that setup can be a bit more involved, as you'll have to setup the msys2 environment first and then find your way around their pacman package manager.

MSYS2 is an option for MinGW, yes, but you could just use my MinGW and Allegro 5.2.2 binaries if you wanted. All you have to do is extract twice using 7-zip and then set your path and include directories.

Note : There is currently some small bug in the distro where ttf files won't load from physfs archives.. Not sure why that is happening.

It should only be a problem if you want to load ttf files from a mounted physfs archive like a zip file. If you load them separately they work fine. If you try to load them from within the archive it fails.

All you need is 7-zip, and to get MinGW and Allegro 5.2.2 from here :

https://www.allegro.cc/forums/thread/616785

TIME 04/01 10:43 EST
I finally realized how to compile c++ with msys, the version I had of msys before my computer crashed must have been a different distro, this is where I am at...

I am trying to compile this https://wiki.allegro.cc/index.php?title=Allegro_5_Tutorial/Displays example code

it looks like this...
#include <stdio.h>
#include <allegro.h>

int main(){

ALLEGRO_DISPLAY *display = NULL;

if(!al_init()) {
fprintf(stderr, "failed to initialize allegro!\n");
return -1;
}

display = al_create_display(640, 480);
if(!display) {
fprintf(stderr, "failed to create display!\n");
return -1;
}

al_clear_to_color(al_map_rgb(0,0,0));

al_flip_display();

al_rest(10.0);

al_destroy_display(display);

return 0;
}

I am running
MyDesktop@MSI MINGW64 /c/users/MyDesktop/documents/heap/Programs/allegro5
$ g++ allegrodisplay.cpp -I c:/msys64/mingw64/include/allegro5 -o adx.exe

and getting this...

C:\msys64\tmp\ccpsquRm.o:allegrodisplay.cpp:(.text+0x22): undefined reference to `al_install_system'
C:\msys64\tmp\ccpsquRm.o:allegrodisplay.cpp:(.text+0x69): undefined reference to `al_create_display'
C:\msys64\tmp\ccpsquRm.o:allegrodisplay.cpp:(.text+0xbf): undefined reference to `al_map_rgb'
C:\msys64\tmp\ccpsquRm.o:allegrodisplay.cpp:(.text+0xdb): undefined reference to `al_clear_to_color'
C:\msys64\tmp\ccpsquRm.o:allegrodisplay.cpp:(.text+0xe0): undefined reference to `al_flip_display'
C:\msys64\tmp\ccpsquRm.o:allegrodisplay.cpp:(.text+0xf5): undefined reference to `al_rest'
C:\msys64\tmp\ccpsquRm.o:allegrodisplay.cpp:(.text+0x101): undefined reference t o `al_destroy_display'
collect2.exe: error: ld returned 1 exit status

Also trying with Ubuntu in a Virtualbox but it says E: Unable to locate package allegro