Greg Jandl to SDL I did some digging, and I think I've found a better solution. By including some additional .m4 macros in the acinclude directory (http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf-archive/ax_check_compiler_flags.html, http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf-archive/ax_gcc_archflag.html and http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf-archive/ax_gcc_x86_cpuid.html) then using the patch below (same as previous patch + one line change to configure.in), SDL will build correctly out of the box. The arch can then be overridden by --with-gcc-arch=<arch> (most will probably want to build with i686 there for general distribution) or --without-gcc-arch, to disable setting the arch all together. On my Atom netbook, I get -march=PentiumPro by default, which works great, as does --with-gcc-arch=i686.

/* Print out all the scancodes we have, just to verify them */

#include <stdio.h>
#include <ctype.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>

#include "SDL.h"

int
main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    SDL_scancode scancode;

    if (SDL_Init(SDL_INIT_VIDEO) < 0) {
        fprintf(stderr, "Couldn't initialize SDL: %s\n", SDL_GetError());
        exit(1);
    }
    for (scancode = 0; scancode < SDL_NUM_SCANCODES; ++scancode) {
        printf("Scancode #%d, \"%s\"\n", scancode,
               SDL_GetScancodeName(scancode));
    }
    SDL_Quit();
    return (0);
}