I used
./configure --prefix=$HOME
make
make install
to install sdl2, after which I tried to ins
After I read top answer above,
I installed python-dev, libsdl-image1.2-dev.
Then I got
Hunting dependencies...
WARNING: "pkg-config freetype2" failed!
WARNING: "freetype-config" failed!
SDL : found 1.2.15
FONT : not found
IMAGE : found
MIXER : not found
PNG : found
JPEG : found
SCRAP : found
PORTMIDI: not found
PORTTIME: not found
FREETYPE: not found
Missing dependencies
So I just installed these and it worked.
sudo apt install python-dev libsdl-image1.2-dev libsdl-mixer1.2-dev libsdl-ttf2.0-dev libportmidi-dev libfreetype6-dev