sdlarch is a small libretro frontend (sdlarch.c has less than 1000 lines of code) created for educational purposes. It only provides the required (video, audio and basic input) features to run basic libretro cores and there's no UI or configuration support.
Other than make, pkg-config and a working C99 or C++ compiler, you'll need
sdl2 development files installed.
./sdlarch <core> <uncompressed content>