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MySQL 5.0 Reference Manual :: 2 Installing and Upgrading MySQL :: 2.16 MySQL Installation Using a Source Distribution
2.16.1 Source Installation Overview »
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2.16. MySQL Installation Using a Source Distribution

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2.16.1. Source Installation Overview
2.16.2. Typical configure Options
2.16.3. Installing from the Development Source Tree
2.16.4. Dealing with Problems Compiling MySQL
2.16.5. MIT-pthreads Notes
2.16.6. Installing MySQL from Source on Windows
2.16.7. Compiling MySQL Clients on Windows

Before you proceed with an installation from source, first check whether our binary is available for your platform and whether it works for you. We put a great deal of effort into ensuring that our binaries are built with the best possible options.

To obtain a source distribution for MySQL, Section 2.5, “How to Get MySQL”. If you want to build MySQL from source on Windows, see Section 2.16.6, “Installing MySQL from Source on Windows”.

MySQL source distributions are provided as compressed tar archives and have names of the form mysql-VERSION.tar.gz, where VERSION is a number like 5.0.91.

You need the following tools to build and install MySQL from source:

  • GNU gunzip to uncompress the distribution.

  • A reasonable tar to unpack the distribution. GNU tar is known to work. Some operating systems come with a preinstalled version of tar that is known to have problems. For example, the tar provided with early versions of Mac OS X, SunOS 4.x, Solaris 8, Solaris 9, Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris, and HP-UX are known to have problems with long file names. On Mac OS X, you can use the preinstalled gnutar program. On Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris you can use the preinstalled gtar. On other systems with a deficient tar, you should install GNU tar first.

  • A working ANSI C++ compiler. GCC 3.2 or later, Sun Studio 10 or later, Visual Studio 2005 or later, and many current vendor-supplied compilers are known to work.

  • A good make program. GNU make is always recommended and is sometimes required. (BSD make fails, and vendor-provided make implementations may fail as well.) If you have problems, use GNU make 3.75 or newer.

  • libtool 1.5.24 or later is also recommended.

If you are using a version of gcc recent enough to understand the -fno-exceptions option, it is very important that you use this option. Otherwise, you may compile a binary that crashes randomly. Also use -felide-constructors and -fno-rtti along with -fno-exceptions. When in doubt, do the following: 

CFLAGS="-O3" CXX=gcc CXXFLAGS="-O3 -felide-constructors \
       -fno-exceptions -fno-rtti" ./configure \
       --prefix=/usr/local/mysql --enable-assembler \
       --with-mysqld-ldflags=-all-static

On most systems, this gives you a fast and stable binary.

If you run into problems and need to file a bug report, please use the instructions in Section 1.7, “How to Report Bugs or Problems”.


User Comments

Posted by [name withheld] on February 12 2003 11:23pm[Delete] [Edit]

If you have problems compiling on an Athlon (gcc segfaulting), try changing to the directory enclosing the problem file, compiling the file with no optimization (i.e. removing -O2 and/or -O3). Then change back to the base directory and run make again. Worked for me!

Alternatively, turn optimization off for the entire build using -O0

Posted by [name withheld] on June 7 2003 10:13pm[Delete] [Edit]

--enable-assembler on OpenBSD 3.2 causeed errors in the make process. Took it out, worked okay. Not sure of the effects on performance yet, as I have not run 4.0 long enough yet. Hopefully it will be better than 3.23, because it crashed while outputting large ammounts of records often.

Posted by [name withheld] on November 6 2003 11:03am[Delete] [Edit]

I just successfully ran make on OpenBSD 3.4 for i386, mysql-4.0.14 with the following options:

CFLAGS="-O3 -mpentiumpro" CXX=gcc CXXFLAGS="-O3 -mpentiumpro \ -felide-constructors -fno-exceptions -fno-rtti"

then I did

./configure --prefix=/usr/local/mysql --enable-assembler \
--with-mysqld-ldflags=-all-static

Make install succeeded, now I'm on to the test/verify initial installation chapter :)

Posted by [name withheld] on April 7 2004 11:32am[Delete] [Edit]

I tried following your instructions on RHL 8.0 and got the notorius gcc switch problem can't use -c and -o. Removed -c from the compile directive in the Makefile AND voila! What version of GCC are you using to build MySQL and what options are you handing off to ./configure?

Posted by [name withheld] on August 21 2005 8:35pm[Delete] [Edit]

If you are intending to utilize SSL with your MySQL and have
difficulties passing the arguments to the configuration script, then modify the following sections. Open up `./configure' with your favorite editor (This modification are done to the mysql-4.1.3 configuration file with OpenSSL 0.9.4 package for Slackware 10.1):

/usr/bin/openssl The actual openssl binary
/usr/include/openssl The header files
/usr/lib For libssl.so* and libssl.a

Find the following variables near line 37187:

incs="$openssl_includes"
libs="$openssl_lib"

and hardcode the the appropriate locations to them, i.e.:

incs="/usr/include/openssl"
libs="/usr/lib"

A few lines below add the OpenSSL library path to the following list:

for d in /usr/ssl/lib /usr/local/ssl/lib
/usr/lib/openssl /usr/lib /usr/lib64 /opt/ssl/lib
/opt/openssl/lib /usr/freeware/lib32 /usr/local/lib/ ;
do
if test -f $d/libssl.a || test -f $d/libssl.so ||
test -f $d/libssl.dylib ; then
OPENSSL_LIB=$d
fi
done

To:

for d in /usr/lib /usr/ssl/lib /usr/local/ssl/lib
/usr/lib/openssl /usr/lib /usr/lib64 /opt/ssl/lib
/opt/openssl/lib /usr/freeware/lib32 /usr/local/lib/ ;
do
if test -f $d/libssl.a || test -f $d/libssl.so ||
test -f $d/libssl.dylib ; then
OPENSSL_LIB=$d
fi
done

NOTE that I added `/usr/lib' where my libssl* files reside to the list.

A few lines below, you'll find this statement:

if test -f $incs/openssl/ssl.h ; then

Again, $incs already has `openssl' included in its path so change it to:

if test -f $incs/ssl.h ; then

Now rerun the ./configure.

Posted by Dilantha Nanayakkara on March 11 2007 3:47am[Delete] [Edit]

When running ./configure on Ubuntu Server 6.10 Edgy it complains

checking for termcap functions library... configure: error: No curses/termcap library found

You can overcome this by installing ncurses-dev by running

sudo aptitude install ncurses-dev

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