How to use SDL2 with Qt Creator - Windows

I was struggling with using SDL2 and Qt Creator and found some threads here on SO that were mostly helpful but nothing that put it all together for SDL2 and Qt Creator on Windows 10. The main issue was that I could not use the console for I/O at the same time as SDL2 and following the other recommendations, a number of different things went wrong.

There were two keys:

1) Which SDL2.dll file to use and which directory to place it.

Some said use the SDL2.dll file download from the SDL website. Others said put this file in the main project directory, which did not work for me. What worked for me was first doing a build of my project (which failed) but creates a "build-..." directory. Then, taking the SDL2.dll file from installDir\SDL2-2.0.5\i686-w64-mingw32\bin and placing it in the "build-..." directory.

2) In the project.pro file, adding manually:

INCLUDEPATH += installDir/SDL2-2.0.5/i686-w64-mingw32/include LIBS += -L installDir/SDL2-2.0.5/i686-w64-mingw32/lib -lmingw32 -mwindows -mconsole -lSDL2main -lSDL2 CXXFLAGS = -std=c++11

To be honest, I don't know if all of the calls in LIBS are needed, but it's now working perfectly for me and I thought I'd share some knowledge.